“From the very first day I have maintained that SIR was always meant for Bengal. Bihar was just the testing ground,” says activist Yogendra Yadav.
| Photo Credit: Moyurie Som
Psephologist and activist Yogendra Yadav and economist Parakala Prabhakar were among the public intellectuals who forecast “the highest disenfranchisement in the history of the nation” in West Bengal due to the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters’ lists, claiming that the exercise is part of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ‘misuse of state machinery’ ahead of Assembly polls in the State.
“From the very first day I have maintained that SIR was always meant for Bengal. Bihar was just the testing ground… SIR is a votebandi exercise set to undermine the universality of India’s universal adult franchise,” Mr. Yadav said. He was addressing a Kolkata public event organised by civil society groups, The Educationists’ Forum, West Bengal, and Desh Bachao Gano Mancha on Saturday (November 22, 2025).
If the number of deletions from the electoral roll touches one crore, as predicted by BJP leaders including Suvendu Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly, West Bengal will “witness the largest ever disenfranchisement in the history of India, if not the world,” Mr. Yadav said.
‘Bengal is the target’
“It is no secret that the BJP is desperate to win Bengal. They would use unlimited money, power, misuse state machinery to do so, without compunction… Bengal is really the target for the SIR. Delimitations will happen later but it is clearly an instrument to reduce the electoral weight of those States where the BJP is not sure of its support,” the political activist said.
Citing the Assam Accord and the October 2024 Supreme Court judgment concerning foreign immigrants in Assam, Mr. Yadav said that if the Election Commission was concerned about illegal immigrants or refugees, “Assam should have been the first State for the SIR exercise.”
On October 27, the Election Commission of India announced the SIR of voters’ lists in nine States and three Union Territories including West Bengal, following the completion of the exercise in Bihar.
‘Bloodless political genocide’
At Saturday’s event, economist Mr. Prabhakar called the SIR a “bloodless political genocide” meant to deprive a large number of people of the fundamental political right to vote, and to eliminate meaningful participants from the political process.
He said that the removal of dead, duplicate, and permanently shifted voters should not factor in religion, ethnicity, or linguistic groups. The process of filling up the enumeration form will be exclusionary for weaker sections of society who are deprived of education and resources, he said.
“We are all used to voters choosing the government. With SIR, it is the government that is now trying to choose the voters… SIR is an assault on the constitutional values, the constitutional spirit, and the constitutional morality of India. Let us not mistake it only as reform or cleansing or purifying of the electoral rolls. It is in fact a political cleansing of India,” Mr. Prabhakar said.
‘Backdoor entry for NRC, CAA’
He alleged that flaws in the exercise and the deletions after the SIR in Bihar proves that the exercise is “not meant to clean up electoral rolls”. In the Supreme Court in October, Mr. Yadav, a petitioner, had submitted that there were over five lakh duplicate voters in Bihar’s final electoral roll, post the SIR.
“When the government tried to introduce the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act, there was a massive protest in the country. They could not go ahead with it… This is nothing but the backdoor entry of NRC-CAA in the form of SIR to weed out ‘those’ people who they feel should not be here,” Mr. Prabhakar said.
‘Instrument of control’
Academic and political activist Om Prakash Mishra claimed that the SIR would result in the largest disenfranchised population in the world, in India.
“The reason why this voter list revision is being termed ‘special’ is because it is being used as a political instrument. [SIR] is an instrument of control, it is the instrumentality of exclusion. It is going to undermine India’s democratic, pluralistic traditions and completely erode confidence in India’s democracy so far as the outside world is concerned,” Mr. Mishra said.
He added that West Bengal “will lead the fight against those manipulating the constitutional order” and that civil society groups would become even more active after the draft electoral roll is published on December 9.
Published – November 22, 2025 09:43 pm IST
