Kolkata, February 28 – In a major electoral reset barely two months before the West Bengal Assembly elections, around 63.66 lakh names, nearly 8.3% of the electorate, have been deleted from the state’s voter list since the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) began in November last year, reducing the voter base to over 7.04 crore and significantly reshaping constituency boundaries across the state.
Under the revised voter rolls, published by the Election Commission on Saturday, 60.06 lakh electors have been placed in the "under adjudication" category, with their eligibility now subject to judicial scrutiny in the coming weeks, a process that could further refine constituency-level dynamics.
The first major revision of the electoral rolls since 2002, the SIR, a 116-day statewide exercise, began as a technical revision, but quickly evolved into a defining political moment – one that has numerically and symbolically redrawn Bengal’s electoral landscape before the formal launch of the 2026 election campaign.
The draft rolls published on December 16 had already reduced the electorate from 7.66 crore at the start of the SIR to 7.08 crore, deleting over 58 lakh names due to reasons such as death, migration, duplication, and untraceability. Following hearings and the resolution of claims and objections, another 5,46,053 deletions were recorded through Form-7 applications, bringing the total number of deletions linked to the SIR to around 63.66 lakh.
“Over 58 lakh enumeration forms were not received during the revision process, including cases of deceased, shifted, and duplicate electors,” said Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal at a press conference here, announcing these figures.
More than 1.82 lakh electors were added through Form-6 and Form-6A submissions, partially offsetting the deletions, although officials indicated that minor adjustments could still occur as fresh inclusions and objections continue to be processed.
Around 60.06 lakh names have been placed "under adjudication," primarily due to what officials termed "logical discrepancies" in the enumeration forms, Agarwal said. These electors remain on the rolls pending decisions.
Of the 7.08 crore draft electorate in December, around 1.52 crore were marked for hearings, 31,68,426 classified as "non-mapped" voters, with whom linkages could not be established with the 2002 SIR, and the remaining 1.20 crore flagged for discrepancies. Hearings were conducted for nearly 1.42 crore voters.
After document verification, the Election Commission agreed with Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant EROs in 82 lakh cases. From this pool, about eight lakh names were found ineligible and deleted due to non-appearance or failure to establish eligibility.
Chief Electoral Officer’s officials clarified that if the final roll shows a voter's status as "Deleted" and the individual believes it to be erroneous, a fresh application can be filed through Form-6. After proper verification of documents, the name may be restored to the rolls.
Earlier in the day, a senior official in the Chief Electoral Officer’s office told