In half the seats BJP won in Bengal, total SIR deletions outnumber victory margin

In 105 seats that the Bharatiya Janata Party won in West Bengal, the total number of voters deleted during the special intensive revision exceeds its margin of victory, according to a data analysis by Scroll.

Of these, 86 are seats that the BJP has never won before.

These 105 seats made up about 50% of the BJP’s final tally of 207 on Monday. Bengal has 294 Assembly seats in all. The Hindutva party secured a historic two-thirds majority and ended Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year reign in the state.

In West Bengal, the SIR was a contentious process that dragged on for six months and culminated in a total of about 91 lakh names being deleted, shrinking the state’s voter rolls by 12%. Of the 91 lakh total deletions in the SIR, at least 27 lakh voters are still under adjudication, with their fate to be decided by special tribunals.

The BJP was the only major political party in Bengal that supported the exercise from start to finish.

An odd pattern

The results on Monday clearly showed that there was a significant anti-incumbency sentiment in the state against Banerjee’s government. As a result, the Trinamool Congress, which had won 215 seats last time, was reduced to just 80 in these elections. However, Scroll’s data analysis...

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