Names deleted from electoral rolls, yet Malda sisters still receive PM's poll outreach
Telegraph | 13 April 2026
Their names deleted from the electoral rolls, sisters Suraiya and Rubiya Khatun from Malda district still received calls featuring an audio recording of Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking for their votes.
Suraiya and Rubiya were not alone. A section of Muslim voters in Malda whose names were struck off the rolls said such phone calls deepened their trauma and anxiety.
Mahatabuddin, an Arabic teacher at a state government-aided madrasa based in the Harishchandrapur Assembly constituency in Malda, said his name had been deleted after the special intensive revision of the voter list.
The teacher recently received a recorded phone call with the Prime Minister's voice, urging people to vote for the BJP in the Assembly elections.
“Isn’t it like rubbing salt in the wound? When we are reeling under deep worry after our names are struck off the electoral rolls, such calls asking for our votes only add to our trauma,” Mahatabuddin said, adding that he immediately blocked the number.
Ziaur Rahman, another teacher, recounted a similar experience.
“I also received the call with the Prime Minister's recorded message seeking our votes for the BJP. But it was a one-way communication. I could not convey to the Prime Minister the intensity of my agony of the days when five members of my family, including my wife and me, had been kept under adjudication,” he said.
Their names were later included in the supplementary list, he added.
For Suraiya and Rubiya, however, the exclusion of their names has been "extremely scary and traumatic".
Both in their early thirties, the sisters said that receiving the Prime Minister's recorded voice message asking for their votes despite being marked as deleted voters felt like a “mockery of our acute helplessness”.
Abdur Rahim Boxi, the district Trinamool Congress president, criticised the BJP's phone outreach.
“This is another ‘jumla’. Under ‘Didike Bolo’, people can communicate their grievances directly to Mamata Banerjee’s office. Here, there is only a one-way message,” he said.
Maldaha Uttar BJP MP Khagen Murmu, however, defended the calls.
“We believe in inclusiveness. Our opposition parties brand us as a party of Hindus, but the Prime Minister’s message is reaching all communities, including minorities. The response has been good,” Murmu said.