Retired Indian Administrative Service officer Subrata Gupta was on Saturday appointed as the advisor to West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, PTI reported.
Ahead of the West Bengal elections, Gupta had been appointed by the Election Commission as the Special Roll Observer for the special intensive revision exercise.
Dr. Subrata Gupta, IAS (Retd.) appointed as Advisor to West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari. pic.twitter.com/zFkatOvh18
— ANI (@ANI) May 9, 2026 Earlier in the day, Adhikari took oath as the new chief minister, becoming the first Bharatiya Janata Party leader to hold the post.
Adhikari was sworn in five days after the BJP defeated the Trinamool Congress in the Assembly elections, ending the 15-year rule of the Mamata Banerjee-led party. The BJP won 207 seats in the 294-member Assembly, while the TMC won 80 constituencies.
The special intensive revision of voter rolls was carried out before the elections.
Final rolls published in February initially excluded more than 61 lakh voters, with the process continuing through supplementary lists and adjudication of about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases.
By April 6, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of the electorate before the process began, had been removed. Lakhs of cases challenging their removal from the voter list are pending before appellate tribunals. The exact number is unclear.
Along with West Bengal, the special intensive revision exercise was also conducted in eight other states and three Union Territories. However, the Election Commission introduced a criterion of “logical discrepancy” to assess voters’ applications only in West Bengal.
These logical discrepancies referred to instances such as mismatches in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being more than six.
The Trinamool Congress had accused the Election Commission of arbitrarily deleting large numbers of voters through the special intensive revision exercise, and had approached the Supreme Court against it. The party had also questioned the deployment of a record number of personnel from the central security forces for the election.
About 2.4 lakh Central Armed Police Forces personnel were deployed in the state during elections, with Union Home Minister Amit Shah announcing that they would remain in the state for two months after the polls.
Also read: SIR to CRPF: Five factors that helped the BJP conquer Bengal
Edited by Neerad Pandharipande
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