West Bengal : Election Commission Publishes Draft Electoral Rolls Following SIR , Deletes Names Of More Than 58 lakh Voters

Picture : CEOWestBengal/X

The Election Commission has  published West Bengal’s draft electoral rolls following SIR, deleting the names of more than 58 lakh voters on various grounds, including death and migration, and redrawing voter profiles across districts and border belts ahead of the 2026 assembly polls.

The scale, spread and political geography of the deletions have affected several high-profile assembly seats, and have sharpened political fault lines and set the stage for a contentious verification phase ahead of state elections due in less than six months.

The current term of the 294-member West Bengal assembly is till the first week of May 2026.

According to official data, 58,20,898 names have been excluded from the draft rolls, reducing the state’s electorate from 7.66 crore to 7.08 crore following the conduct of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise from November 4 to December 11.

A detailed breakup released earlier showed that 24,16,852 voters were marked as dead, 19,88,076 as permanently shifted, and 12,20,038 as missing or untraceable.

Another 1.38 lakh voters were identified as having duplicate entries, while 1,83,328 names were flagged as so-called ‘ghost’ voters. Over 57,000 names were deleted under other discrepancies detected during enumeration.

The EC officials stressed that deletion from the draft roll does not end a voter’s chances of restoration and said aggrieved voters can file claims in Form 6 along with a declaration form and supporting documents during the claims and objections window from December 16, 2025, to January 15, 2026.

A senior commission official said that the hearing process for affected voters would begin in about a week’s time.