SIR leaves Matua community members worried

Waves of worry arerippling through the Matua community in West Bengal after Election Commission (EC) data showed that districts where large chunks of such voters reside have recorded high numbers of people who couldn't establish a connection with the base 2002 roll as part of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

- Joydeep Thakur

The enumeration phase of the controversial exercise in the state, which goes to the polls in the summer of 2026, ended last week. In all, 7.6% or 5.82 million of the 76.64 million electors in the eastern state might be removed, similar to the 8% deletions seen after the SIR in Bihar earlier this year.

In addition to the names to be potentially deleted, EC data also shows the number and proportion of unmapped voters — those who couldn't establish a link with the 2002 voter rolls. The North 24 Parganas district has 753,133

unmapped voters, South 24 Parganas has 332,366 and Nadia has 278,427.

In percentage terms, North 24 Parganasand Nadia have the highest proportion of unmapped voters in the state, outside Kolkata and Darjeeling.

“Unmapped voters are those whose names are there in the 2025 list. But neither their names nor their parents’ or grandparents’ names were in the 2002 list. They could not do self-mapping or progeny mapping while filling up the enumeration forms. They would be the first to get notices from the EC for hearing,” said a senior official of the poll panel.