3 min readApr 8, 2026 06:10 AM IST First published on: Apr 8, 2026 at 06:10 AM ISTIn September last year, when the Election Commission of India published the electoral roll for Bihar after a contentious exercise, apprehensions of mass disenfranchisement were put to rest. Nudged by the Supreme Court, the poll body released a list in which deletions were largely attributable to death, migration, and duplication. The process raised hopes that the EC had learnt its lessons — that future Special Intensive Revisions would be routine exercises in electoral hygiene. That hope has been belied in West Bengal. What has unfolded over the past three-and-a-half months is a troubling story of mass deletions, procedural opacity, and a system that, flying in the face of due process, shifted the burden of proof onto the very citizens it is meant to enfranchise. The numbers are stark. When the SIR began in December, West Bengal had 7.66 crore registered voters. The roll frozen on Monday lists only 6.77 crore — a fall of 11.62 per cent. Of the more than 60 lakh whose eligibility was under adjudication since February, as many as 27,16,393 — more than 45 per cent — will have no say in the Assembly elections. Most of them had fulfilled the documentation requirement. Democracy rests on the idea that every citizen has an equal right to choose their representatives. That principle has been compromised.Yes, these 27 lakh citizens have a right to appeal. But the appellate process is cold comfort when elections are imminent. The window for redressal is too narrow, the machinery too overwhelmed, and as this newspaper has reported, people have been left in the lurch by appellate agencies. It was here that the SC’s intervention was needed — especially on the foundational question of inclusion. The Court did engage: It allowed tribunals to accept fresh documents. But its Monday decision is disappointing. Its reasoning —“Appellate authorities will formulate a fair procedure…That may take a month, that may take even 60 days. We cannot, on that contemplation, allow some people because they were earlier mapped” — gives the EC the benefit of the doubt. It is, in effect, the Court’s virtual acceptance of disenfranchisement in this electoral cycle.AdvertisementThis is a departure from the Court’s own Bihar standard, where it pushed the Commission towards transparency, compelling it to own and justify its deletions. In Bengal, that sustained scrutiny was absent when it mattered most. The EC has a storied record of reaching out to every voter, of erring on the side of inclusion. In West Bengal, with a process skewed against the voter and framed by a shrill rhetoric of illegal immigrants, lakhs fear disenfranchisement. Every valid voter deleted from the roll, everyone who now has to navigate the intimidating machinery of redressal, is a blot on the poll panel’s record. The SC has always been the last line of defence for the citizen’s franchise. That role is not diminished by a frozen roll or an electoral calendar. The Court needs to look again, not to reopen a process, but to ensure that no eligible citizen loses her vote because of institutional failure.