‘Prove I’m an outsider’: Aliah University academic challenges EC over voter list dispute in Bengal
Telegraph | 28 March 2026
A university teacher whose voting right is under adjudication dared Gyanesh Kumar, the chief election commissioner of India, to visit his family graveyard in Habra, North 24-Parganas.
“Five generations of my family are buried there. Exhume and take a bone from any of the bodies and match it with me. Do a DNA test. If it doesn’t match, you can deport me wherever you want. But if it does, then what? You dare call me an outsider?” said Saifullah Samim, 51, the head of the Bengali department and the dean of humanities and languages at Aliah University.
Samim, who lives in Dariasudi village in Habra, North 24-Parganas, about 50km from Calcutta, used to vote in the Habra Assembly constituency.
On Friday, he spoke at a mass convention at Esplanade against the way this SIR is being conducted.
The rage against the contentious electoral revision was palpable in a small pocket of New Market on Friday afternoon.
Some of the speakers at the protest meet, behind the Kolkata Municipal Corporation headquarters on Hogg Street, were veteran teachers. Many stood by to listen to them.
The rest of the market seemed chaotic as usual. A couple took pictures after a meal at an old Mughlai favourite. Cars, bikes and loaded carts went up and down the streets. The din of buyers and sellers was constant. Some men listened to the speakers while selling tea.
“Many who have their names cleared cannot understand the anger against the SIR. But don’t forget they are your neighbours, colleagues and friends. My story is not just mine, it’s ours,” said Afroja Khatun, associate professor of Bengali language and literature at Surendranath College for Women.
Her voting rights have also been challenged.
Khatun traces her roots to a village in Murshidabad but has been a Jadavpur voter for two decades.
A minor spelling mismatch in her name triggered a logical discrepancy for which she was summoned to a hearing in late January. She showed her passport and the Madhyamik pass certificate from 1978.
“My passport was renewed in September 2025. A stringent verification process precedes the renewal. If my Indian passport is not proof of my Indian identity, I don’t know what is,” said Khatun.
The Election Commission has so far come out with just one supplementary list — published on Monday night — which is not even accessible to all.
Khatun and Samim have not been able to find out if their names were cleared.
While 705 judicial officers had by Monday disposed of nearly 29 lakh cases, the list carried only 10 lakh names, because of an apparent oversight.
The orders on the remaining cases did not contain the adjudicators’ e-signatures.
The organisers of the meet, members of several rights groups, have also called for a protest march from Park Circus to the office of the Bengal chief electoral officer on Saturday afternoon.
“This SIR was thrust upon us by citing infiltration, Bangladeshis and Rohingyas. However, the commission has failed miserably to find them. It is clear that the entire exercise is part of a deep-rooted conspiracy,” the organisers said in a resolution.