In 10 of 152 Bengal Phase 1 seats, an absolute fall in voter turnout from 2024

Four of these 10 ACs -- Samserganj, Lalgola, Bhagabangola, and Farakaa -- elected a Muslim MLA in every assembly election between 2011 and 2021

10 of 152 assembly constituencies (ACs) in West Bengal that voted on April 23 are likely to have seen a decline in turnout in absolute terms compared to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, although only in one is the drop likely to be more than the victory margin of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, according to HT’s preliminary calculations.

Voters stand in a queue at a polling station to cast their vote in the West Bengal Assembly elections at Berhampore in Murshidabad on Thursday. (ANI)

This is interesting because turnout, in absolute terms, doesn’t usually fall in a state where the adult population is growing.

The 10 ACs are : Matigara-Naxalbari, Phansidewa, and Siliguri in Darjeeling district; Dabgram-Phulbari in Jalpaiguri district; English Bazar in Malda; Bhagabangola, Farakka, Lalgola, and Samserganj in Murshidabad; and Kharagpur Sadar in Paschim Medinipur.

None of these ACs have seen a voter turnout below 88.7% in these elections. In two of these ACs, an absolute fall in the number of voters between 2024 and 2026 was pre-ordained because the number of electors in 2026 itself fell below the number of voters in 2024.

The absolute turnout in these ACs is likely to have decreased by the most in Samserganj (18.9%), followed by Kharagpur Sadar (4.7%), Lalgola (4.6%), Dabgram-Phulbari (4.0%), Phansidewa (3.1%), Bhagabangola (2.1%), Farakka (1.7%), English Bazar (0.9%), Siliguri (0.5%), and Matigara-Naxalbari (0.2%).

Only the decline in Samserganj is more than the victory margin of the 2024 Lok Sabha election. This AC was led by the Congress in 2024. Overall, six of these 10 ACs were led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, four by the Congress, and only one by the Trinamool Congress in 2024. The BJP led Kharagpur Sadar, Dabgram-Phulbari, Phansidewa; English Bazar, Siliguri, and Matigara-Naxalbari. The Congress led in Lalgola and Farakka, apart from Samserganj. The TMC led Bhagabangola AC.

To be sure, these numbers must be read with caution. The Election Commission of India (ECI) has only published the percentage turnout for the 2026 elections. HT applied this percentage to the expected number of electors in the AC after the adjudication phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) to get the absolute turnout in the AC.

The application of turnout percentage to expected electors may lead to minor errors. This is because of at least two reasons. One, the turnout percentage for 2026 does not account for service electors. This means that the ACs where the drop in absolute turnout is small could see a growth in votes polled compared to 2024. After the adjudication process, ECI only published the result of this particular process, such as the number of people under adjudication and the number that were removed in the process. The final elector count for 2026 is derived by applying this deletion number to the data to the pre-adjudication roll. However, the pre-adjudication roll has also seen an addition of 500,000 electors, whose AC-wise details are not known, as HT reported on April 20. This also means that the final turnout in absolute terms can turn out to be slightly higher than calculated by HT.

However, the addition of 500,000 electors is unlikely to fix the problem of drop in absolute turnout everywhere. This is because even if all these 500,000 electors were added to only the 152 ACs voting in the first phase (an unlikely scenario), that would translate to roughly 3,289 electors more per AC than known from the adjudication data. On the other hand, ACs like Samserganj, Dabgram-Phulbari, Lalgola, Kharagpur Sadar, Phansidewa, and Bhagabangola appear to have seen a drop in absolute turnout of over 4,000 voters according to HT’s calculations.