59 ‘ghost voters’ haunt booth in village near Katwa for over a decade
The Statesman | 1 November 2025
As many as 59 ghost voters still haunt a single booth at a village in Katwa in Burdwan East district, and they have been “spooking” the voters’ lists freely for more than a decade, according to a complaint lodged yesterday by the BJP with the Election Commission of India. This period has witnessed pairs of General, Assembly and Panchayat elections.
The “ghostly story” has emerged from the dark on the eve of the commencment of the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of electoral rolls. The BJP’s Mandal Committee president in Katwa, Suryadev Ghosh, claimed: “The ruling Trinamul Congress intentionally concealed the matter so as to use the names of such ghost voters for proxy voting during elections.”
The booth in question is No. 258 of Koara village under Polsona Panchayat in Katwa. The living residents of the village felt the ripples of SIR waves when a BJP team conducted a door-to-door survey in search of deceased voters. The survey purportedly resulted in the names of 59 non-existent persons, a striking number considering that the booth has a total of 1,125 voters.
One of the “ghost voters” is Joba Das, who died11 years ago. Her name is still on the voters’ list of 2025. Her mother Minati Das explained: “How could I know that my daughter’s name was still alive there? It has never been shown to me.” She added: “My daughter died in 2014 after her pancreatic disorder. She was just 23 and my entire family is yet to recover the trauma of her demise.”
Another dead villager Jharna Das is also on the Electoral Roll. Her nephew Madhusudan said: “The Panchayat had issued my aunt’s death certificate 12 years ago. It’s up to the administration to delete her name from the roll.”
Trinamul Congress district general secretary Biswanath Saha, meanwhile, has refuted the charges that the names have been kept on the electoral roll “intentionally”. He said: “The rolls are prepared by the Election Commission, not by the TMC.” About BJP’s charges of misuse of such names on election day, he said: “All that is bogus. The elections are held under the surveillance and guard of their Central Forces. Then how is it possible?”