The Election Commission on Tuesday published the draft electoral rolls for West Bengal under the special intensive revision exercise, PTI reported.
The names of over 58 lakh voters have been removed from voter lists in the state as they either died, migrated outside the state or did not submit their enumeration forms.
With these deletions, West Bengal’s electoral rolls now have the names of 7,08,16,631 voters, as against 7,66,37,529 earlier, The Hindu reported.
Citizens can search for their names on the voter roll on the Election Commission of India’s portal eci.gov.in or the website of the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer at ceowestbengal.wb.gov.in
Physical copies of the draft rolls will also be available with booth-level officers, who have been asked to remain present at polling stations on the day of publication.
Digital copies have also been shared with representatives of the state’s eight recognised political parties.
The Election Commission said the list of deleted names includes names that appeared in the January 2025 rolls but do not feature in the draft rolls prepared after the revision exercise, which ran from November 4 to December 11, PTI reported.
Last week, data released by the office of the chief electoral officer showed that over 24.1 lakh voters were marked as dead, 19.8 lakh as permanently shifted and 12.2 lakh as missing or untraceable at their registered addresses.
Another 1.38 lakh voters were identified as having duplicate entries, 1.8 lakh were classified as “ghost” voters, and more than 57,000 names were removed under other discrepancies detected during enumeration.
The Election Commission stressed that deletion from the draft roll is provisional, and that citizens can object to their names being removed from the list.
The ruling Trinamool Congress alleged a “joint conspiracy” by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Election Commission, claiming that the prospect of “hearings for nearly two crore voters” amounted to an attempt to scare citizens, PTIreported.
“If anyone dares to snatch away Bengal’s democratic rights, Bengal will never stay silent,” the party said on social media. “We will resist, we will fight, and we will defeat Bangla-Birodhi BJP.”
West Bengal is expected to head for Assembly elections in the first half of 2026.
Besides West Bengal, the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 11 other states and Union Territories.
In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll published on September 30.
Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.
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