West Bengal's real poll battle: Not on streets, but over who gets to vote

Armoured vehicles rumble along rural roads and Central Armed Police forces patrol through bazaars.

- JAYANTA ROY CHOWDHURY

Checkpoints dot the highways, where cars and buses are stopped and searched for cash or liquor meant to influence voters.A day before Bengal heads for a crucial election, and the unprecedented deployment by the Election Commission of India is supposed to curb possible political clashes and “vote buying.”

However, the "war zone movie set" scenario, belies the fact that the real battle for Bengal's ballot box may not be unfolding on these roads at all. It is being fought, more quietly but no less consequentially, in tribunals tasked with determining who has the right to vote in the forthcoming elections, and by implication who is an Indian.

Some 91 lakh people had their names removed from voter rolls, through an exercise called the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Out of these 91 lakh, some 27 lakh had their names struck off after being placed under adjudication by an Artificial Intelligence generated filter which felt their entry had "logical discrepancies".

Deletions based on "logical discrepancy" could be on as flimsy a ground as why a son's surname is spelled differently from his father’s, such as Rai and Ray, Chattopadhyay (Sanskriticised surname for Brahmins from the Chattal region) and Chatterjee (Anglicised version of Chattopadhyay).

For Bengali Muslims, most of whom have no fixed surname, this has meant whole villages have been left out of the voter list.

The deletions have impacted minorities, women and the poor the most say researchers working with the data officially available.

The border districts of Malda, Murshidabad, North and South 24-Parganas, with huge Muslim and Dalit populations have been hit the hardest, with the number of deleted names ranging from 2.2 lakh (South 24-Parganas) to 4.6 lakh (Murshidabad).

However, the "privileged class" too have been hit by the role purification drive, often inexplicably.