Kamal Ghorui
KOLKATA: The Bhowanipore assembly constituency – the high-profile seat where Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee is pitted against BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari – has seen its electorate shrink by nearly 25% following the SIR of the electoral roll.Of the total 51,004 deletions, 23.3% are Muslims and 76.7% are non-Muslims.Before the SIR process, Bhowanipore had 2,06,295 voters. In the first phase, 44,787 names were removed under categories such as absent, shifted, deceased, duplicate, or unmapped. A second round saw another 2,342 deletions, while 18 new voters were added. Around 14,154 voters were placed under adjudication, a source said.Sabar Institute researchers said their analysis of 15 supplementary lists showed 10,238 voters initially marked for adjudication were later reinstated, while 3,875 were deleted. “Among those deleted in supplementary lists, nearly 40% are Muslims,” one of them said.EC sources said around 3,500 names were deleted during the adjudication process. “Nearly 14,000 cases were marked for adjudication,” an official said.The institute’s analysis also showed 43% of non-Muslims were placed under adjudication. While 7.7% of Muslims were ultimately deleted from the final rolls, the figure for non-Muslims stood at 92%. Earlier data showed Muslims accounted for 22.7% of voters marked as ‘absent, shifted, dead/duplicate’, while their share among ‘unmapped’ voters was around 26%, in line with their population. However, in the ‘logical discrepancy’ category, their share rose to 52%.
