Opposition says Bengal roll revision could strike genuine voters before Kolkata polls

The Trinamool Congress, the Congress and the Left Front have jointly objected to new Election Commission rules for removing names from electoral rolls, warning that they could be used to strike off genuine voters before the Kolkata and Howrah civic elections. They raised the objection at an all-party meeting called by West Bengal's Chief Electoral Officer, Neelam Meena, in Kolkata on Tuesday, the Millennium Post reported. The BJP defended the rules as a way to clean up the rolls.

The meeting was held as a Special Summary Revision (SSR) of the rolls gets under way. The draft roll is due on 23 November, objections can be filed from 28 November to 20 December, and the final roll is to be published on 16 January 2027, Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) Commissioner Smita Pandey told a separate all-party meeting, the paper reported. Pandey is also the district election officer for Kolkata North.

The objections

The opposition parties focused on the Commission's revised rules for Form 7, which is used to object to a name on the roll and seek its deletion. Their main concern was a provision that allows one person to file up to 10 objection forms in an Assembly constituency, which they said could be misused against legitimate voters.

Trinamool's Kunal Ghosh said the SSR had begun without resolving the cases of eligible voters left out during the earlier Special Intensive Revision (SIR). He asked that voters placed in the "logical discrepancy" category be allowed to apply for inclusion through Form 6, the application to be added to the roll. He also complained that no minutes were kept and that the CEO had not addressed the opposition's concerns, according to the Millennium Post.

A Congress delegation led by Ashutosh Chattopadhyay said bogus objections had put about 1.2 lakh voters in Kolkata and 39,000 in Howrah at risk of losing their votes, and pointed to a shortage of judges in the tribunals hearing SIR cases. The Left Front's Palash Das called the SSR a "mass deletion exercise". He said objections had been raised against 16 lakh voters who had been included after verification, and that nearly 27 lakh cases were pending before tribunals. These figures are the parties' own and have not been confirmed by the Election Commission.

The BJP's reply

The BJP's Sisir Bajoria rejected the allegations. He pointed to anomalies in the existing rolls, such as hundreds of voters listed as the children of a single person, and said Form 7 was needed to remove such discrepancies, the paper reported. The CEO's office had not published a response to the objections by Wednesday morning.

Background

The Election Commission told state chief electoral officers on Tuesday that people dropped from the draft rolls during the SIR can apply afresh through Form 6 without being prosecuted merely because they had been registered before, provided they are not enrolled elsewhere, ETV Bharat and Business Standard reported. Opposition parties in Bengal want that route opened to all voters excluded in the SIR before the civic polls.

Kolkata has had no elected civic board since June, when the corporation was dissolved and an administrator appointed. The state has since redrawn the city's wards, raising their number from 144 to 209, and the Calcutta High Court refused on 29 October to stay the new map. The State Election Commission has not announced a polling date. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said in Siliguri on Tuesday that the BJP would win Kolkata, Howrah and Siliguri "in February", and indicated that Kolkata and Howrah would vote before Siliguri.

What happens next

• 23 November: draft electoral roll published
• 28 November to 20 December: claims and objections
• 16 January 2027: final roll