Poila Baisakh fast: 68-year-old Metiabruz man protests voter deletions in Bengal
Telegraph | 16 April 2026
While the city feasted to celebrate Poila Baisakh, a 68-year-old Calcuttan in Metiabruz observed a 12-hour fast without even a drop of water.
Jitendra Nath Nandi, a former editor of a local magazine and social worker, was on a symbolic satyagraha against the exclusion of citizens from the revised electoral rolls.
Known as Jiten da in Metiabruz, Nandi is a trade union activist-turned-Gandhian who has, since April 1, been spearheading a platform to assist disenfranchised voters in filing online appeals with SIR tribunals.
Tech-savvy residents of the area, including Zaheer Molla, Mohammed Alamgir and Motiur Rahman, are helping Nandi. A Calcutta High Court lawyer has also drafted a template that Nandi and his team are adapting according to individual cases. Between April 1 and 15, the group has processed over 150 appeals.
“When India was celebrating Independence, Gandhi had moved to Beleghata to fast and pray for peace between Hindus and Muslims. Had he been alive today, he would have fasted in protest against this exercise called SIR, which is discriminatory and polarising,” Nandi said.
Metiabruz, a Muslim-dominated constituency, had a voter base of over 2.3 lakh during the 2021 Assembly elections. According to Nandi, more than 39,000 voters have been deleted from the segment during the SIR, many of them women. “My fast is in solidarity with these people, my people,” he said.
Whether these people will be able to vote in this election is not the only question, Nandi said. “What will happen to those deleted after the tribunals decide their cases? Can their children get admission in schools? Will they be able to get free ration? Will they get loans? These are the questions that must be asked.”
Last year, Nandi participated in the Ek Kadam Gandhi Ke Sath padyatra, a 56-day march organised by the SarvaSeva Sangh, the apex body of Gandhian institutions in the country.
The march began from Rajghat in Varanasi on October 2, 2025 (Gandhi Jayanti) and concluded in Delhi at Jantar Mantar on November 26, 2025 (Constitution Day). The nearly 1,000-km journey aimed to revive Gandhian values and protest against the alleged takeover of a Gandhian institute by the Uttar Pradesh government.
Once deeply involved in political activism aligned with radical Left ideologies, Nandi said he quit politics over three decades ago and “sought refuge in the Mahatma”.
He is pained by the high-decibel political campaign centred on nationalism that vows to drive out “infiltrators”.
“Some families, with multiple members removed from the rolls, have been living in Metiabruz for more than 100 years,” he said.
Nandi attributed the polarisation to the absence of a moral compass, something Gandhi always sought to intil. “Gandhi was not a nationalist in the way the term is used today. He always prioritised the society around him and wanted it to have a strong moral compass,” he said.