‘Live or die, we have to vote TMC’: How SIR has left Bengali Muslims with no political choices

Ramjan Sheikh was among the hundreds from Ahiran village who showed up for a public meeting organised by the Trinamool Congress in Murshidabad’s Jangipur on April 10. The main attraction: Bengali film actor Srabanti Chatterjee, who had flown down from Kolkata to campaign for Jakir Hossain, the local MLA.

But Sheikh was not impressed.

“I came here hoping that they would talk about SIR [special intensive revision],” complained the 28-year-old whose name was deleted from the voter rolls last month. “But nobody from Trinamool is saying that the rights of voters like us should be ensured before elections.”

Sheikh is not alone. The names of 91 lakh voters have been removed from the state’s electoral rolls as part of the special intensive revision. In stark contrast to other states, many voters in West Bengal had to attend hearings and produced documents to establish their bona fides in this SIR.

Analysts who studied the deletions found that the state’s Muslim voters have been hit the worst. A disproportionately large number of Bengali Muslims will not be allowed to vote in the upcoming Assembly elections.

Travelling through the Muslim-majority districts of Malda and Murshidabad, which elect 34 of West Bengal’s 294 MLAs, Scroll found Muslim voters seething with anger. Their disenfranchisement has become the main election issue even...

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