It is around midnight as an exhausted 23-year-old Moinul Ansari, with a bag slung across his back and holding an empty paint bucket, stands on the pavement opposite the Santragachi railway station in Howrah. Ansari is on his way back home to Murshidabad district’s Baharampur from Tamil Nadu, where he works as a mason.Ansari is among lakhs of youths who are pouring into West Bengal, after taking long-distance train and bus journeys from across the country, to cast their votes in the state Assembly elections scheduled for April 23 and 29. According to state government estimates, there are around 36 lakh Bengali migrants living or working outside the state, though unofficial estimates put the figure at 50 lakh.AdvertisementDuring the Election Commission (EC)’s contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bengal, districts with large migrant populations saw high rates of adjudications and deletions of voters. While a section of migrants had returned to the state in March, and several had stayed back after Eid, a majority of them have now started to return to Bengal from Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan and other states. Domestic help, rag pickers, and construction workers, among others, are now making a beeline for Bengal.“This time, it is very important that we cast our votes. I want to keep my name on the voter list. My voter card is the first and the only thing, apart from Aadhaar, that is checked when I go to work outside Bengal,” said Ansari, a resident of a Lalgola town in Murshidabad who spent the last eight months working in Tamil Nadu’s Tambaram.“The train (Shalimar Express) was packed. There was no place to sleep. It was eight hours late. But we will have to get back home,” Ansari said. Eight others along with Ansari, some working as masons and others as domestic help, are headed to Lalgola in time for the first phase of voting on April 23.AdvertisementJasmir Sheikh, 35, a resident of Birbhum district’s Sainthia, was part of a 12-member group that went to Chennai for work. “Generally we come home during Eid and leave afterwards. But this time elections are on. So we did not come during Eid. However, we could not get train reservations. There is a rush of people returning home. Finally, we had to pay a fine (for travelling in the reserved compartment). But we had to return, by hook or crook, to vote,” said Jasmir, who had left for Chennai seven months ago.From the Santragachi station, migrants were seen boarding private buses and pickup trucks to reach the Howrah and Sealdah stations, from where many will catch connecting trains to their homes.“I lost my shoe and hurt my leg while disembarking from the train. There were hundreds of migrants like me jostling for space,” said Pradip Nag, 24, a resident of Hariharpara in Murshidabad. Nag was returning from Kerala where he works at a brick kiln and earns a daily wage of Rs 600.“A mason gets Rs 1,000 daily while a helper gets Rs 600 in Chennai. Where is the work here in Bengal? After casting my vote, I will return to work in Chennai,” said Anwar Hussain, 30, a Murshidabad resident.Rakib Khan, a 24-year-old motorcycle mechanic in Kerala’s Kozhikode district, is returning home to Durgapur in the Paschim Bardhaman district. “We are two friends coming together. We had a reservation on the Coromandel Express but it was so crowded that we failed to get on the train. Then we boarded a different train that usually arrives in the morning but ultimately reached Santragachi at midnight. My friend lost his spectacles in the crowd. This is horrible but we have no option because we have heard that to maintain our voter IDs, we have to cast our vote this time.”“This time, many names have been deleted from the voter list and we don’t want that to happen to us. We must vote,” Khan added.Standing outside a local market, 28-year-old Pintu Mahaldar, a resident of the Sujapur Assembly seat in Malda, said, “I was stuck in Mumbai during the Covid-19 lockdown for three months. Now during the SIR, I was stuck in my village for three months. First, they called me for a hearing. Then, they sent my name into adjudication. Then, the EC deleted my name. Now, I am waiting for the tribunal. I work as a painter. Every day, I’m losing at least Rs 1,000 that I used to earn in Mumbai every day. Without a voter card, we also can’t go back there because they will not employ us.”25-year-old Alauddin Mahaldar’s name was in the supplementary voter list and later included in the final rolls. The Sujapur resident, who works in Mumbai, said, “I came home during the hearings. Now, I am coming to cast my vote. Every time, I have to spend Rs 7,000-Rs 8,000. This is the extra cost we are bearing.”Returning from Bihar’s Gaya, 52-year-old Minarul Islam, who is a resident of Bhagabangola in Murshidabad, said, “This year, I have had to come home every month for a few days at a time. First I came to submit the SIR enumeration form. Then for the hearing, and then again for Eid. Now I am coming to cast my vote. I work at a rice mill office. Every time, my travel expenditure is around Rs 3,000. You can calculate how much money I spent in the last two-three months.”Migration from Bengal to other states is a widespread and well-documented phenomenon. Malda, Murshidabad, North and South 24 Parganas, Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur, and Purba and Paschim Medinipur districts have among the highest rates of outward migration.During the SIR, among these districts, Malda, Murshidabad, and North and South 24 Parganas also saw the highest percentage of voter deletions. After adjudication, 2.3 lakh and 4.5 lakh voters were deleted in Malda and Murshidabad, respectively, while in South and North 24 Parganas, deletion stood at 2.2 lakh and 3.2 lakh, respectively.As voting day approaches, every political party has begun addressing these migrant workers, who represent a significant chunk of Bengal’s electorate.Senior BJP leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, said, “One crore migrant workers are returning. The central government already arranged 77 trains for them. In those trains, irrespective of caste and religion, everybody is shouting slogans of ‘paltano darkar, chai BJP sarkar (need change, need a BJP government)’.”you may likeHowever, the incumbent TMC has disputed this claim. “We don’t think the central government has arranged anything for migrant workers. They are trying to delete their names from the voter lists. Migrant workers were beaten in BJP-ruled states for speaking Bengali. We are not officially arranging any conveyance for them. However, if any TMC candidate is arranging something for their return, we have no problem,” said TMC spokesperson Arup Chakraborty.Asif Faruk, the state general secretary of the Parijayee Shramik Aikya Manch (Migrant Workers Unity Forum), says voting is crucial for migrant workers. “The ink on the forefinger is not just a mark of voting, it is a symbol of asserting one’s Indian identity by erasing the ‘Bangladeshi’ label. Driven by this urgency, migrant workers are spending their hard-earned money and risking their lives by travelling in overcrowded trains to return home. This time, for them, voting is not merely about helping a candidate win; it is about standing up against suspicion and mistrust that brands them as outsiders.”“We had demanded that the Railway Ministry arrange additional trains for the upcoming Assembly elections. However, no such arrangements were made to help migrant workers return home. Through an RTI, we learned that 18 trains and 36 trips were provided for the PM’s rally, but not a single train was arranged for migrant workers to return home and exercise their right to vote,” Faruk says.