Bengal Congress moves SC against special intensive revision of voter rolls in state
The West Bengal unit of the Congress has approached the Supreme Court challenging the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in the state, Bar and Bench reported on Monday.
The petition comes days after the Election Commission began the enumeration phase of the exercise in 12 states and Union Territories, including West Bengal, on November 4.
The revision was announced by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on October 27. In addition to West Bengal, the 12 states and Union Territories also include Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, where Assembly elections are due in 2026.
The draft rolls will be published on December 9, and the final list on February 7, 2026.
The matter on West Bengal was mentioned before Justice Surya Kant, who is also hearing a similar case related to the electoral rolls revision in Bihar. The counsel for the petitioner requested that the West Bengal case be listed along with the Bihar matter on Tuesday, Bar and Bench reported.
The judge agreed to list the matter on Tuesday along with the Bihar case.
The voter list revision in Bihar had been announced by the poll panel in June and completed ahead of the Assembly elections in November. In the final electoral roll published on September 30, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded.
Several petitions had been filed against the voter roll revision in Bihar raising concerns that the process could remove eligible voters from the list. However, the Election Commission continued with the exercise since the court did not impose a stay on it.
But the court on September 8 had directed the Election Commission to accept Aadhaar as valid identity proof for the revision in Bihar.
Aadhaar had not been among the 11 documents the poll panel had allowed as proof of citizenship. Petitioners had called its exclusion “absurd”, noting that it was the most widely held form of identification.
In the past two weeks, several persons in Bengal have died by suicide allegedly over fear of being excluded during the voter list revision.
The Election Commission has repeatedly defended the revision as a clean-up effort to remove names of the deceased, duplicate entries and undocumented migrants.
Similar petitions have been filed against the exercise by other state governments.
On November 6, the Left Democratic Front government in Kerala said that it will move the court challenging the voter roll revision in the state.
On November 3, Tamil Nadu's ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam moved the court against the revision of the electoral rolls in the state, describing it as a “constitutional overreach”. The petition contended that the exercise could lead to the large-scale disenfranchisement of voters.
Source: Scroll
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