More than 40% of the voters deleted in West Bengal’s Bhabanipur seat during adjudication as part of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls were Muslims, even though the community comprises only about 20% of the population in the constituency, an analysis by a Kolkata-based research organisation found on Wednesday.
Trinamool Congress chief and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is the MLA from Bhabanipur. In the upcoming Assembly election as well, Banerjee will contest the seat against Bharatiya Janata Party MLA and Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari.
The analysis by the Sabar Institute showed that among voters found to be absent, shifted, dead or duplicate entries, the share of Muslims – 22.7% – was broadly in line with the community’s population.
However, Muslims constituted 40.1% of the voters deleted from the supplementary lists released after an adjudication process, the research organisation found. “These deletions are triggered by minor spelling mismatches or arbitrary criteria like ‘too many siblings’,” Sabar Institute said on social media.
The Election Commission had published its preliminary “final” list of voters after the special intensive revision in Bhabanipur on February 28. At the time, 14,113 names were listed as “under adjudication”, according to The Telegraph.
The poll panel later released 15 supplementary lists, in which 10,238 voters were included and 3,875 voters were deleted. Of those deleted, 1,554 voters, or 40.1%, were Muslims, Sabar Institute said.
An analysis by fact-checking website Alt News had found that in Bhabanipur, the share of voters put under adjudication was higher among Muslims as compared to non-Muslims.
As many as 51.8% Muslim voters were put under adjudication after the special intensive revision, the Alt News reported.
Banerjee had won the Bhabanipur constituency by a record margin of 58,832 votes in a bye-poll held in September 2021. However, in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Trinamool Congress won only 8,297 votes more than the BJP in the Bhabanipur segment of the Kolkata South parliamentary seat.
Deletion patterns structural across Bengal, says research group
On Wednesday, Sabar Institute noted that the patterns of deletions are “structural” across West Bengal.
On Sunday, the institute released a similar analysis about the Nandigram constituency. It had noted that although Muslims make up only 25% of the population there, they accounted for 95.5% of the deletions in seven supplementary lists released by the Election Commission.
The organisation had analysed voter roll data from supplementary lists 1, 2, 3, 4a, 7, 8 and 9.
Nandigram, part of the East Midnapore district, is represented by Adhikari in the Assembly. He is contesting from the seat in the upcoming polls as well, besides Bhabanipur.
Assembly elections in West Bengal will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4.
The Trinamool Congress has alleged that the Election Commission, through the special intensive revision exercise conducted before the polls, targeted specific communities for deletion from the voter rolls, including the Matuas, Rajbanshis and minorities.
The Banerjee-led party has also alleged that the poll panel has engaged in the partisan posting of officials for conducting the election.
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