Polling in the first phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections Thursday set a new record of voter turnout over 92%, more than 10 percentage points higher than the 2021 turnout. This reflects not just the deletion of electors – deceased, shifted, absent, duplicate – from the rolls during the Special Intensive Revision, bringing down the overall base and enhancing the percentage, it also points to robust voting by those who had cleared the Election Commission’s SIR test.The ruling TMC and challenger BJP interpreted this record turnout in opposing ways, each announcing a mandate in its favour and the beginning of the end of the other.AdvertisementWhile the turnout saw a record spike, the number of voters in absolute terms was over 12% lower than the number for votes cast in these 152 constituencies in 2021. According to the provisional turnout figures, around 47 lakh fewer people voted in these seats this time compared to 2021.Read | Over 96% polling in Bengal seat with highest SIR deletions in Phase 1Started in October last year, the SIR of electoral rolls led to a total of 91 lakh electors being cut from the rolls. Overall, the electorate was trimmed by 11.63% in the state. Out of those deletions, 58 lakh were cut in the draft stage, with the EC saying those electors had either died, or shifted, or were enrolled in multiple places or were absent during the enumeration phase of the SIR in November and December last year. Thereafter, another 32 lakh were deleted in the notice period and in an unprecedented adjudication phase in West Bengal. Voters brave the soaring temperature as they wait for their turn outside a polling booth in Nandigram. (Express photo by Tanusree Bose)Not only did the SIR trim the rolls, it also became an issue for parties during the campaign. Ever since the announcement of the SIR by the EC in June last year, the Trinamool Congress and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee have opposed it. Banerjee is also among the petitioners against the SIR in the Supreme Court. She had likened the SIR to a National Register of Citizens exercise.AdvertisementDuring the poll campaign, the TMC raised this issue, while the BJP countered it saying that the Banerjee government had been protecting infiltrators who were now being removed from the rolls.Read | Mamata interprets record-breaking turnout: ‘TMC already in drivers seat’As the first phase polls closed Thursday, the TMC, in a statement, said, “Despite the Election Commission deleting 91 lakh names through SIR, Bengal has delivered a record voter turnout. Why? Because the people of Bengal know this could be their last real chance to secure their future. They see the NRC and delimitation threat staring them in the face, and they have voted with full force to smash every future conspiracy of BJP.”Confident of a BJP win, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in a post on X, said, “The sun of TMC’s corruption and hooliganism has set.” Electors queue infront of polling stations during the first phase of the West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026, in Alipurduar on Thursday. @CEOWestBengal X/ANI Photo)During the campaign in West Bengal, Shah had said that his party would form the government. Explaining the government’s approach, he said it believed in the “detect, delete and deport” policy, referring to identifying illegal immigrants, deleting them from the rolls and then deporting them to their home countries.Read | Stray violence marks polling: BJP candidate chased away, Kabir’s men clash with TMCWhile one of the reasons the EC conducted the SIR was to remove foreign nationals who had incorrectly made it to the rolls over the years, it is yet to disclose how many such people have been detected in the SIR so far.West Bengal voters from across the country made their way home in time to vote, most fearing that if they don’t, they may end up getting removed from the rolls. People take shade while waiting in a queue before voting in the first phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections, at a polling station in Panskura (Photo/PTI)In Murshidabad, which saw the highest deletions in the SIR, Roshan Ali, a migrant labourer who works in Chennai, detailed the journey home to vote. “There were no tickets. The trains were packed, but we had to return home. I came two days ago. Our livelihood depends on the voter card and being on the electoral list. That is the first thing they want to see outside West Bengal. We need to vote and keep our name in the electoral rolls.”Turnout in the Tamil Nadu Assembly polls also set a new record at 84.69%, as per the EC’s provisional figures. Tamil Nadu, too, saw a deletion of 11.55% of electors during the SIR.The SIR broke from the norm of the past 20 years when the EC would update electoral rolls through annual and pre-election Special Summary Revisions (SSR), in which existing rolls were revised with additions and deletions. The EC had not conducted an intensive revision since the early 2000s, when the electoral rolls were digitised.you may likeIn the SIR so far, the EC has conducted the exercise in 10 states and three Union Territories, leading to deletion of 5.58 crore names from the rolls in these states/UTs, including West Bengal. While all states where the SIR has been conducted and elections held have seen higher turnout than the last time, West Bengal’s experience with SIR was unique. Voters queue outside Madhupur Primary School. (Express photo by Partha Paul)In the case of West Bengal, the EC, including on orders of the Supreme Court on some occasions, rolled out a series of steps during the SIR that were unique to the state. This included the deployment of micro-observers, judicial officers and appellate tribunals to decide on eligibility of electors.As a result, 27.10 lakh electors who had submitted documents were deleted from the rolls. On orders of the court, 19 appellate tribunals were set up in March to hear appeals against these deletions. As of Wednesday, the tribunals had only added back 139 names to the rolls.– (With Ravik Bhattacharya)