Congress leader Shashi Tharoor raised major questions about the special intensive revision of voter rolls on Sunday — even as he admitted that the party may have ‘benefited’ from some of the changes. The Thiruvananthapuram MP highlighted the omission of nearly 91 lakh names before the West Bengal elections and linked it to the BJP victory. Tharoor also noted that nearly 30 lakh people were unable to vote during the recent elections since their cases remain under legal scrutiny.
“There are legitimate questions to answer. Look at the Bengal case. 91 lakh names were struck off the rolls. Of those, 34 lakh living human beings have appealed, saying that they are around and they are legitimately entitled to vote… To this day, some 31-32 lakh people might be found to have been legitimate voters in the remaining years, while the adjudication carries on, but they have missed their chance to vote. The BJP won Bengal by a margin of 30 lakh votes. Now you tell me, is that entirely fair and democratic?” he asked.
He was speaking at a roundtable on ‘India, That is Bharat: Growth Governance and Identity’ at the Stanford India Conference in San Francisco.
How did SIR impact West Bengal?
The revision of voter rolls was a vehemently contested factor amid the electoral battle in West Bengal. The Election Commission removed close to 91 lakh names mere weeks before the polls — significantly altering the voter base in many constituencies. Roughly 58 lakh deletions were tagged under the absent, shifted, deleted, and displaced categories while an additional 27 lakh voters were declared ineligible after judicial adjudication. The new voter rolls published in late February also added about 1.88 lakh new voters. The Trinamool Congress had alleged that the revision affected minorities, migrants and economically weaker sections — raising concerns about disenfranchisement of legitimate voters.
Data suggests a strong correlation between high deletions and seat flips in West Bengal — with the number of ‘ineligible’ voters far exceeding the victory margin in dozens of seats. To give an example, the Jangipur constituency in Murshidabad district saw BJP winning by a margin of 10542 votes following the deletion of 36,581 voters.
SIR deletions ‘benefited’ Congress: Tharoor
Tharoor however opined that the Congress may have “benefited” from the deletions in Kerala — lashing out at the previous CPI(M) government. Both parties are members of the Opposition INDIA bloc but operate as ‘rivals’ in the southern state. The Congress-led United Democratic Front recently defeated the Pinarayi Vijayan government to win a resounding mandate.
“In Kerala, I suspect the Congress benefited from the deletions because the CPIM was long a past master of double, triple, quadruple enrollment… That used to happen. So they were eliminated by the SIR,” Tharoor said.
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