New Delhi, April 8 Political activist Yogendra Yadav on Wednesday alleged that the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is being used to "rewrite" voter lists, terming it a "targeted" exercise that may influence electoral outcomes in several constituencies.
Addressing a press conference here, Yadav claimed that the revision, instead of being a routine updating exercise, placed an unprecedented burden on voters to re-establish their eligibility.
"This is not revision, it is rewriting," he said, adding that citizens were now required to freshly apply to remain on the electoral rolls or risk deletion.
He alleged that the process had effectively shifted the onus of inclusion onto existing voters and overturned what he called the long-standing presumption of citizenship, terming both measures "unprecedented in the history of this country."
Claiming that there was a particularly intensive exercise in West Bengal, Yadav said nearly 9.8 lakh names were deleted in the first phase, placing the state among the highest in the country outside Uttar Pradesh, where final figures were still being compiled.
He claimed that cumulative deletions across states could be as high as six crore.
Rejecting the claim that West Bengal's electoral rolls had been inflated before the revision, Yadav, who is also a psephologist, cited the state's elector-population ratio (E/P ratio) of 99.67 per cent and said this indicated a near-perfect match between the adult population and registered voters.
"There was no underlying problem that warranted such an extraordinary exercise," he said.
Yadav alleged that the process had a political underpinning and disproportionately affected certain regions and communities.
He pointed to patterns in deletions and adjudication that, according to him, showed a higher impact in minority-dominated districts such as Malda and Murshidabad, while some BJP strongholds reported comparatively lower elimination rates.
He also raised concerns over procedural changes in the later stages of the revision, including the deployment of around 8,000 micro-observers, 10 special roll observers and 20 roll observers from the central authorities, which he said was unlike the practice followed in other states.
Yadav alleged that around 60 lakh disputed cases were taken up under an "unusual" mechanism following judicial intervention and that the workload imposed on officials made meaningful hearings impossible.
According to figures cited by him, the exercise required disposal of nearly 250 cases per official per day, or about 25 every hour.
He claimed that this process eventually led to the deletion of an additional 27 lakh names in West Bengal, with the overall deletion rate touching 45 per cent in disputed cases.
He said such deletions accounted for a significant share of the electorate and could alter results in closely fought constituencies.
Referring to electoral margins, Yadav said that while the Trinamool Congress-BJP vote gap was 9.8 percentage points in the 2021 Assembly polls and 7.1 percentage points in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the scale of deletions in the current revision was around 5 per cent.
According to Yadav, 36 Assembly seats had been won by margins below five per cent, and between 19 and 25 seats could be critically affected, with as many as 54 to 70 seats being vulnerable.
Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, who also addressed the press conference, alleged that the revision exercise departed from long-established legal safeguards governing electoral roll deletions.
Referring to the 1995 Supreme Court judgment in the Lal Babu Hussein case, he said any voter whose name appeared in an earlier electoral roll must be presumed to be a citizen unless serious doubts were raised through due notice and a hearing.
Bhushan questioned the timing of the exercise, claiming that the Election Commission's own past guidelines required at least six months for an intensive revision, whereas the present exercise was carried out within three months.
Professor Dipankar Dey of the University of Calcutta raised concerns over the social and economic impact of the exercise in West Bengal.
He said the deletions affected entire families whose members were required to repeatedly visit electoral offices to verify records.
Dey said the process imposed a significant financial burden on economically vulnerable households, with a conservative estimate of the cumulative cost to citizens running to around Rs 2,000 crore in lost wages and travel expenses.
He alleged that Bengali-speaking migrant workers in several states were being tagged as Bangladeshis, leading to a climate of anxiety.