West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Thursday attacked the BJP over ‘high voter deletions’ in Matua-dominated areas during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state.
Taking to X on the death anniversary of Matua Mahasangha matriarch Binapani Devi, the chief minister posted, “But regrettably, the machinations of the BJP government at the centre have pushed the Matua brothers and sisters into a volatile and confusing situation today. Politics is being played in the name of giving citizenship. Their identity is being questioned. SIR is deliberately excluding them from the voter list. Those who are hereditary citizens of this country, by whose votes the government is elected, are today being put in the face of uncertainty in the name of giving them a new ‘citizenship’.”
She further said, “We will not accept this injustice. Our struggle will continue against the ongoing attempt to take away the rights of the people of Bengal, including my Matua siblings… This is my pledge on this special day.”
Like during the publication of the draft electoral roll, a high number of deletions were recorded in the Matua or Scheduled Caste-dominated areas in the final list published on February 28.
According to data provided by the Election Commission of India (ECI), the highest number of deletions (16,491) in the second phase took place in Dabgram-Fulbari assembly constituency under Darjeeling district. It was followed by Bagda assembly constituency in the North 24 Parganas district, where 15,303 voter deletions were recorded. Kalyani Assembly constituency of Nadia district took the third position with 9,037 voter deletions.
When the draft roll was published, Bangaon-Uttar saw 26,183 deletions, followed by Bagda (24,927 deletions), Bangaon-Dakhsin (18,562 deletions), and Gaighata (16,718 deletions).
Interestingly, all these constituencies have a sizeable number of Matua voters. A senior ECI official said, “In the second phase, mostly those who did not appear in the hearing were deleted. This means these electors were not confident to produce proper documents, and that is why they skipped the hearing.”
West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal said a total of 63,66,952 voters have been deleted under the SIR process in Bengal. Of this, 5,46,053 names were deleted during the second phase. Meanwhile, 1,82,036 voters were added under Form 6, and 6A and 6,671 voters were added to the list under Form 8, taking the total number of voters to 7,04,59,284 in the state.
The ECI also informed that 60,06,675 voters are ‘under adjudication’ in the state, and their statuses will become clear in the supplementary list to be published later.