After Bihar, plans for SIR in Mamata’s Bengal?

West Bengal could face the same predicament as Bihar. The Reporters’ Collective, a non-profit investigative journalism portal, has reported that orders to undertake the Special Intensive Review in West Bengal could come within this fortnight. The state recently completed a full special summary review of its electoral roll and would now be forced by the Election Commission to junk the entire exercise and build the voter base from scratch, with just months to go for the assembly elections.

The assembly elections in West Bengal are to be held before May 2026. The overhaul of the electoral roll in West Bengal could start as soon as this month, state officials have been informed by the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal, who represents the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the state, the Collective added. ECI’s Special Intensive Review is an unprecedented revision of electoral rolls, first ordered for Bihar on June 24.

Surprisingly, the special intensive revision (SIR) that the ECI has ordered in Bihar (and then in Bengal) is not described in either the rules or the manuals of the Commission.

Apprehending this move of the Modi regime, which has been so far rejected by the Bengal electorate, Ma hua Moitra, a Member of Parliament from Trinamool Congress, has filed a petition against such an unprec edented Special Intensive Review of the electoral roll in the state before the Supreme Court, along with Manoj Jha, a Member of Parliament for Rashtriya Janata Dal who has filed a plea for Bihar Nine other opposition parties from the INDIA bloc, in cluding the Indian National Congress, have also filed a petition.

Apart from the political parties, the Association for Democratic Rights, a civil society election watchdog too, has opposed the move before the apex court. The case is listed to be heard for the first time on July 10.

Unlike a regular revision of voter lists that is conduct ed by the state’s election apparatus each year, this is a de novo exercise, where election authorities create voter lists from scratch. The Commission justified the move because it is encountering significant shifts in the electoral roll. It may be pertinent to note that Bihar’s latest revision exercise, which was a Special Summary Revision held at the end of last year, captured no particular anoma lies to raise alarm.

Key parameters to check the health of the electoral roll, such as population-to-voter ratio, were in the same range as the final rolls of 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021. Like Bihar, West Bengal too has been conducting regular revisions of its electoral rolls. It concluded its special summary revision last year, and the final elec toral roll was published on January 6, 2025.

Unlike Bihar, where both the draft and the final elec toral rolls were made available by the ECI, the finalised rolls of January 2025 for West Bengal are not available on its state or central website.

The office of the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal is also mandated to publish lists. These, too, have not been made publicly available.