The Election Commission of India (ECI) published data by districts for the post-Special Intensive Revision (SIR) adjudication process for six million electors in West Bengal on Tuesday. The fate of all but 22,163 of the 6,006,675 electors who were put through the adjudication process has been decided: 45% of those under adjudication have already been found ineligible as voters. These electors will not be able to vote in the forthcoming elections, although there is still a possibility that they might
West Bengal has lost 8.9 million electors from its pre-SIR elector count
West Bengal had 76.6 million electors before the SIR process began in the state. HT’s calculation using the data released by ECI on Monday and Tuesday puts the number of electors as of now at 67.7 million voters. This entails a loss of 8.9 million voters in absolute terms: 6.2 million of these were deleted during the SIR process (as it has been conducted in other states) and another 2.7 million in the adjudication process that followed (which is unique to the exercise in West Bengal). To be sure, this number could change for the entire state as the state’s 142 constituencies voting in the second phase could see addition of new voters and depending on the fate of 22,163 who are still under the adjudication process. How is the change in Bengal’s pre-SIR and post-adjudication elector strength compared to other states which have undergone SIR or Special Revision (Assam)? Before the adjudication exercise, it had seen a loss of 8.1% electors, placing it in the middle of the pack. With that number now 11.6%, West Bengal is ranked only behind Gujarat and Chhattisgarh among big states, neither of which are going to polls before 2027. To be sure, Uttar Pradesh is yet to complete its SIR process. (See Chart 1)
West Bengal has seen a slight weakening of the correlation between urbanisation and deletion post-adjudication
Ever since the SIR exercise was started with Bihar in June 2025, conspiracy theorists have attributed ulterior motives to it. These pages refrained from theorising before facts and were proved right. In almost all large states, deletions were higher in districts which had a greater share of urban population. We attributed it to migrants being registered as voters in more than one place and eventually choosing their place of birth when the SIR process forced them to make a choice. West Bengal continues to fit this pattern even after adjudication, but largely because of the changes in electoral roll before the adjudication process, with the correlation between the two numbers now weaker. Deletions under the adjudication process have a very weak correlation with urban population share across districts. (See charts 2A and 2B)
What is even more remarkable is the strong correlation between Muslim population share and adjudication process
Muslim voters bearing the brunt of the SIR process was a strong concern in West Bengal and many other states. Data until the completion of the SIR process (pre-adjudication in West Bengal) did not support such fears. District-wise deletions had a very weak correlation with the share of Muslims in the population. This is not the case as far as the adjudication process is concerned. Not only were districts with higher share of Muslims more likely to see a higher share of voters being put under adjudication, they have also seen a higher share of deletions as a proportion of the pre-adjudication roll. Of course, this needs to be read with the caveat that we do not know the actual religious identity of people on the voter roll. (See charts 3A and 3B)
How does the new elector roll for West Bengal fit into the electoral math of 2024?
One cannot avoid this question anymore given the strong correlation between deletions between the pre and post-adjudication roll and the share of Muslims across districts. Muslims, after all, are unlikely to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in what is a completely polarised contest between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress (TMC). The data, even after the post-adjudication deletions, still do not show any district-wise correlation between electors deleted and assembly constituencies (AC) won by the TMC across districts in 2024. However, this could also be a result of lack of granular data on number of Muslim electors or AC-wise deletions and the signal getting lost in the noise of district-wise aggregation.
For instance, anecdotal reports, such as one published by HT, show an overwhelming share of Muslims being deleted in the Nandigram AC. But at the district level, Purba Medinipur district in which Nandigram is located, has seen lowest deletions in percentage terms. This is exactly what Hindustan Times had warned against in an editorial published on March 3: “State capacity and institutional trust are key in shaping narratives about the state of democracy in India. When they are found lacking, alarmists always sound more credible than they are”.
One Subscription.
Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines
to 100 year archives.
Archives
HT App & Website
Abhishek Jha is Assistant Editor-Data at Hindustan Times. He uses statistical programming to generate newsworthy insights from large datasets. He is part of the team that produces Number Theory, a daily data story feature of the paper’s print edition. Since March 2024, he has been writing Weather Bee, a weekly column for the Hindustan Times website. He is a chemical engineer by training, who specialises in stories related to weather, climate, and the environment. Jha has been at HT since 2018, where he offers data-driven perspective and analysis on politics, environment, weather, climate, economy and society. His work includes data coverage of elections in India and abroad, including the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections; the disasters and extreme weather resulting from changing climate, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, cold waves, and dwindling snow cap in the Himalayas; the factors that drive poor air quality in northern India; the changing patterns of land use; the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on labour market conditions; the changing pattern of consumer spending seen in the new consumer spending surveys; and social norms seen in the surveys such as the National Family Health Survey.
Roshan Kishore is the Data and Political Economy Editor at Hindustan Times. He heads the newsroom's data journalism team, which produces Number Theory, a daily data-driven feature for the print edition and the HT app. Number Theory uses data analysis and story-telling based on it to add value to the newsroom’s daily coverage by putting stories in a larger context on a range of issues, including politics, macroeconomy, markets, global affairs and climate. Under his leadership HT’s data journalism work has established itself as a niche product in Indian journalism and pushed the boundaries of marrying academic rigour with news sense and speed. Along with writing and editing data stories, he has also been writing a weekly political economy column called Terms of Trade for HT Premium. A trained economist with an MPhil degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kishore has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his journalistic work, his writings have also appeared in journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and working papers for CASI and UNESCAP.