Bengal Assembly Election 2026: West Bengal is still doing a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter rolls. This has led to a heated political fight before the 2026 Assembly elections. Since late 2025, official records show that the names of almost 91 lakh voters, or about 12% of the population, have been slowly removed from the rolls.
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Mamata Banerjee’s claims: “targeted disenfranchisement”
Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister, has spoken out strongly against the practice, calling it “electoral genocide.” She says that the change hurts Muslim, Matua, and Rajbongshi minorities more than it hurts other groups. A lot of these groups are important to the people who back TMC.
Banerjee took the case to the Supreme Court of India, saying that the process was too fast and not clear. A court put some names back on the list, but she says that thousands of real voters may still not be able to vote in the next election.
The election effect: Will it hurt TMC’s bottom line?
Bengal Assembly Election 2026: The changes that were made might have a big impact on the election. In the 2021 elections, TMC won a lot of seats by small margins, usually by fewer than 10,000 votes. More than 45 of these seats are very close, so even a small drop in the number of votes could change the result.
Analysts say that close races have happened in about 120 districts in the past. This is where a lot of the deletions have taken place. The TMC’s normal edge could be hurt by the falling number of voters in places like Nadia and others, where there are a lot of minority groups.
As the election dates get closer, the fight over changing the voter rolls will still be a big issue in politics. Both sides are getting ready for a big fight that could change the political landscape in West Bengal.
