Voter deletions exceed victory margins in half of BJP-won seats in Bengal: Report
The SIR, a six-month exercise supported solely by the BJP, resulted in the deletion of approximately 91 lakh names -- a 12% reduction in the state’s total voter base
The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) historic victory in the West Bengal Assembly elections has come under scrutiny following a data analysis showing that in more than half the seats won by the party, the number of voters removed from electoral rolls exceeded the margin of victory.
According to a report by Scroll, the total number of names deleted during the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was higher than the victory margin in 105 of the 207 seats secured by the BJP.
Of these 105 constituencies, 86 are "swing seats" that the Hindutva party had never won before, including former strongholds of the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
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The BJP secured a two-thirds majority in the 294-seat Assembly on Monday (4 May), ending Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's 15-year tenure.
While the results indicated a strong anti-incumbency sentiment that reduced the TMC to just 80 seats, the analysis suggests the SIR process may have played a decisive role in the outcome.
The SIR, a six-month exercise supported solely by the BJP, resulted in the deletion of approximately 91 lakh names -- a 12% reduction in the state's total voter base.
At least 27 lakh of these deleted voters are currently under adjudication by special tribunals.
Data tabulated by the Kolkata-based Sabar Institute highlights several key battlegrounds where the deletions proved significant.
In the Indus seat of Bankura district, where the TMC had held a 9,000-vote lead during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the SIR removed 7,515 voters. On Monday, the BJP won the seat by a slim margin of only 900 votes.
Even in urban centres like South Kolkata, the pattern persisted.
In the Jadavpur seat -- historically a bastion of the communists and later the TMC -- the BJP surged from a third-place finish in 2021 to a first-time victory.
While more than 56,000 names were excluded from Jadavpur's rolls during the SIR, the BJP won by a margin of 27,716 votes.
The impact was felt heavily by the outgoing cabinet.
At least ten ministers, including Shashi Panja, Siddiqullah Chowdhury, Moloy Ghatak, and Snehasis Chakraborty, lost their seats in constituencies where the number of deletions surpassed their margin of defeat.
Long-standing TMC "pocket boroughs" also crumbled; Minister Aroop Biswas lost Tollyganj for the first time in two decades by 6,013 votes, in a seat that saw 37,889 deletions.
Most notably, TMC leader Mamata Banerjee lost her Bhabanipur seat to BJP's Suvendu Adhikari by 15,105 votes.
The constituency, which had been a TMC stronghold since 2011, saw over 51,000 voters purged during the SIR process.
