Tea garden work records to be held as valid ID proof for SIR in north Bengal, says EC

The Election Commission on Sunday said that official employment records of workers at tea gardens and cinchona plantations in north Bengal would be counted as a valid document to prove their identity for the ongoing special intensive revision of voter rolls in West Bengal.

This would be applicable for workers in seven districts of Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, North Dinajpur and South Dinajpur, the poll body said in a letter to the chief electoral officer of West Bengal.

Many of these workers do not possess the documents mandated by the Election Commission for the voter roll revision process. The commission had earlier said that tea estate workers would be verified by district election officers, The Times of India reported.

Since October last year, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have been making representations to the poll panel on the subject, The Telegraph reported.

Raju Bista, the party’s Darjeeling MP, had sent letters to the poll body in October and November highlighting that the North Bengal districts were home to large tea garden, tea tribe, and forest-dwelling communities who have been excluded from electoral rolls over the years.

“Historically, since the British era, and even decades after Independence, most workers in tea and cinchona gardens possessed no official documents other than their employment records,” he had said while pointing that many of them did not have land rights either.

In response to the poll body accepting the suggestion, Bista said the decision “will benefit thousands of citizens who have long been denied basic documentation and electoral inclusion”.

The state’s draft electoral rolls were published on December 16. It showed that more than 58 lakh voters were removed after being marked dead, shifted or absent.

West Bengal is expected to head for Assembly elections in the first half of 2026.

Besides West Bengal, the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 11 other states and Union Territories.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll published on September 30.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll.

Also read: Single mother, BJP MLA, Marwari trader: The Bengal voters on EC’s SIR radar