Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Around 60 lakh electors in West Bengal have been categorised as ‘doubtful’ by Election Commission, and their cases have been sent for adjudication by judicial officers appointed by the Kolkata high court. This is in line with the Supreme Court‘s directive dated Feb 20. With assembly elections in the state likely to be announced in the second half of March, this means that it would be a race against time for the “doubtful” voters to be made a part of the electoral list.Sources said that the final electorate of Bengal is around 6.4 crore, with a total 1.2 crore deletions since Oct 27, 2025 (15.9%). Of these, around 61.8 lakh were deleted on account of being deceased, shifted, migrated and registered at multiple places and another 60 lakh categorised as ‘doubtful’ voters under adjudication.Such ‘doubtful’ electors, as and when their cases are approved by the court-appointed judicial officers, shall be added back to the state’s roll by way of supplementary lists to be published later. Until then, these voters will not be eligible to vote in any election.A senior EC functionary told TOI that the majority of these ‘doubtful’ electors are likely to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. “Despite stiff resistance, the SIR exercise in Bengal has been a huge success,” said another EC official.According to the rules, the electoral roll of a state is frozen 10 days before the last date for nomination in Lok Sabha or assembly elections. So only those ‘doubtful’ voters whose cases are disposed of within the prescribed deadline can vote in the upcoming Bengal assembly elections.It remains to be seen how much time the judicial officers will take to dispose of cases of the 60 lakh ‘doubtful’ voters in West Bengal. The cases of thousands of ‘doubtful’ or ‘D’ voters in Assam, categorised as such since 1997 and not allowed to vote, have been under adjudication by the foreigners tribunals for decades. Only after the tribunals declare the ‘D’ voters as bona fide citizens can they vote. If ruled as foreigners, they are sent to detention centres and deportation proceedings initiated.The judiciary-appointed officers in Bengal will now have to do the same for those categorised as ‘doubtful’ voters due to SIR, ostensibly on grounds of being Bangladeshis. So effectively, the judicial officers will act like foreigners tribunals, examining and confirming citizenship of ‘doubtful’ electors before restoring their voting rights.At the start of the SIR exercise on Oct 27, 2025, Bengal’s electorate stood at 7.7 crore. The draft roll published on Dec 16, 2025, put the strength of the electorate at 7.08 crore after 58.2 lakh deletions. The final roll published on Saturday listed 6.4 crore voters, with 3.6 lakh net deletions since draft roll publication.
