Campaigning in West Bengal has entered a sharper and more confrontational phase with less than two weeks left before voting, as the battle over the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral roll moves to the centre of the contest between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Polling is scheduled in two phases on April 23 and April 29, and the row over who stays on the rolls, who has been excluded and whether the revision has been carried out fairly is now shaping the political mood as much as the familiar issues of welfare, corruption, jobs and identity.
Trinamool Congress leaders have accused the Election Commission of presiding over a process that, in their view, has disproportionately hurt voters in areas seen as favourable to the party. The party has argued that large-scale deletions, disputed classifications and errors in the final list risk disenfranchising lawful voters at a critical moment in the electoral cycle. Abhishek Banerjee has publicly said that all deleted voters would be restored if his party returned to power, turning the issue into both an administrative criticism and an electoral promise. Individual cases cited in the public debate have added emotional force to the argument, including complaints that long-time electors with documents in order have found themselves left off the final rolls.
The Election Commission, for its part, has maintained that the exercise is grounded in law and constitutional requirements. Official Election Commission material on Special Intensive Revision says electoral rolls must be revised before elections or as required, and frames the drive as an effort to secure “pure electoral rolls” by addressing duplication, migration, non-removal of deceased voters and wrongful inclusion of foreigners. It links eligibility to Article 326 of the Constitution, which ties voting rights to citizenship, age, ordinary residence and the absence of legal disqualification. That constitutional framing has become the backbone of the Commission’s defence against the charge that the process was politically tailored.
What has intensified the argument is the scale of the deletions being reported. Multiple reports say nearly 91 lakh names were removed after the revision, while more than 27 lakh people listed as doubtful voters had their claims rejected. Those numbers have been politically explosive because they suggest a shift large enough to influence turnout patterns, party calculations and the tone of the closing campaign. Reports have also pointed to uneven geographical effects, with districts such as Murshidabad, North 24 Parganas and Malda drawing particular scrutiny, while some constituencies have seen especially steep contractions in the electorate. Bhowanipore, one of the state’s most watched seats, has been cited as a striking example after tens of thousands of names were removed there.
The BJP has defended the revision and cast it as a necessary clean-up. Party leaders have argued that the exercise is aimed at eliminating bogus or ineligible entries rather than targeting genuine citizens. That position fits the party’s wider campaign language on infiltration, border governance and documentation, themes it has tried to sharpen in Bengal for several election cycles. Its manifesto rhetoric and public remarks by senior figures suggest the party believes the roll revision complements a broader political message built around legality, welfare delivery and a challenge to Trinamool’s hold over the state after 15 years in office.
Yet the political risk for the BJP and the Commission lies in whether procedural legitimacy is enough to offset public anger in places where genuine voters believe they have been excluded. The controversy has widened beyond party platforms because it touches the basic right to vote, and because some reported anomalies have been difficult to dismiss as routine clerical mistakes. One account said a Trinamool worker’s name was deleted in Bengal and appeared on a Bihar roll, while other reports described elderly electors and former polling officials struggling to understand why they had lost their place on the list. Even where such cases are not representative of the whole exercise, they carry outsized political weight during a tightly fought campaign.
