Bengal polls: No clarity on voters’ list with 15 days left; Mamata claims EC-BJP snatching 'people’s rights'
Telegraph | 25 March 2026
Bengal remains in the dark about the final voters' list, with 15 days left before nominations close for the second phase of polling, as 705 judicial officers race to finalise a “fool proof” roll promised by the Election Commission ahead of the special intensive revision in the state.
The Supreme Court had directed the commission to keep updating the supplementary list till the last date of filing of nominations.
For the 152 Assembly constituencies, which will go to polls on April 23 in the first phase, the last date of filing nominations is April 6. On April 29, the remaining 142 Assembly seats will go to polls and nominations have to be submitted by April 9.
In each of the two phases, April 6 and April 9 are the cut-off date for the supplementary lists to be published.
Bengal’s chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal did not respond to questions from The Telegraph Online.
“Website e dekhe neben. Eta amaar kaachhe mukhostho nei (Check the website. I don’t remember the details,” Agarwal had told mediapersons in Calcutta on Tuesday while voters across the state in many constituencies were struggling to find their names in the list.
On Monday, hours before the supplementary list was uploaded, the poll panel sources had said out of the 60.06 lakh voters marked under adjudication, the judicial officers had cleared around 29 lakh voters.
More than 36 hours later the commission still hasn’t clarified how many voters among the 29 lakh cases have been deleted.
Many of the booths across constituencies under adjudication deleted did not throw up any data. The downloaded PDF showed one line message – “no adjudication pertaining to this part till 5pm on 23.3.2026.”
In one booth in Basirhat Uttar of North 24-Parganas, the data showed names of 101 male voters and 75 female voters were deleted from the Nagar Kachua Free Primary school. In the same constituency’s Bunarati Free Primary school, names of 72 male voters and 70 female voters have been deleted.
Former bureaucrat and commission-appointed special observer for Bengal, Subrata Gupta, said the list is being uploaded as and when rolls bearing the digital signatures of judicial officers are received by the poll panel.
“It is not that we are deciding when to publish the list,” Gupta said.
There is no clarity yet on when the supplementary list for each of the booths in the 294-seat Assembly will be ready.
The Supreme Court had directed that voters with their names deleted after adjudication could approach the appellate tribunals set up in each of the districts. The tribunals are yet to start functioning.
In her first election campaign rally in north Bengal’s Jalpaiguri, chief minister Mamata Banerjee accused the commission and BJP of ignoring the Constitution.
“The Election Commission and the BJP-government are not following the Constitution. They are trying to snatch away voting rights,” Mamata said at Moynaguri’s Town club ground.
“We got independence at midnight, and we feel proud of it. But today, they have forgotten independence. They are not following Constitution or democracy. They are snatching away people’s rights,” Mamata said referring to the release of the supplementary list close to midnight on Monday. “Today, they are snatching away voting rights; tomorrow, they will snatch away citizenship by bringing NRC.”
Later, at an election rally at Naxalbari in the Siliguri subdivision, she claimed eight lakh names have been deleted in the first supplementary list from the 27 lakh electors whose voting eligibility was adjudicated as part of the SIR exercise.
"I have been told that 8 lakh names of 27 lakh voters under adjudication have been deleted from the first supplementary list. But where is that list? Why have hard copies of that list not yet been put up in government offices so far?" she posed. "I can only verify the information after that list is displayed.”