Bengal man dies by suicide allegedly over fear of being excluded during voter list revision

A 95-year-old man from West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district died allegedly by suicide in Birbhum on Wednesday as, according to his family, he was anxious about being excluded from the voter list during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the state announced by the Election Commission, PTI reported.

The man, Kshitish Majumdar, was found hanging at his daughter's home in the Illambazar area of Birbhum district.

Family members told the police that Majumdar had been anxious after learning that his name was missing from the 2002 electoral rolls.

Majumdar's family had moved to West Bengal from Bangladesh in 1995 and settled in Paschim Medinipur district, PTI quoted an unidentified police officer as saying.

According to the police, the man was listed on the voter rolls earlier and had voted multiple times.

“Majumdar was repeatedly told by his neighbours that anyone whose name did not appear on the 2002 voter list would have to return to Bangladesh,” an unidentified police officer was quoted as saying. “The warnings reportedly left him deeply anxious.”

The police have registered a case of unnatural death and begun an investigation.

The death came two days after the Election Commission announced a special intensive revision of electoral rolls in 12 states and Union Territories, including West Bengal.

The state is expected to head for Assembly elections in 2026. The draft rolls will be published on December 9 and the final list on February 7, 2026.

A similar revision exercise was carried out recently in Bihar ahead of its Assembly polls. Following the revision, about 47 lakh names were excluded from the final electoral roll published on September 30.

The Election Commission has maintained that the process is a routine clean-up to remove the names of deceased persons, duplicate entries and undocumented migrants.

The poll panel has not stated that those whose names did not appear on the 2002 voter list in West Bengal would face exclusion or deportation.

For the Bihar voter roll revision, persons whose names were not in the 2003 voter list were asked to furnish proof of eligibility to vote.

Majumdar's death is the third such incident reported in West Bengal this week.

On Tuesday, a 57-year-old man in the state died by suicide, leaving behind a note purportedly blaming the National Register of Citizens for his death, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said.

On Wednesday, another man in Cooch Behar allegedly attempted to die by suicide, with his family attributing it to fear about the voter roll revision exercise, The Times of India reported.

On Thursday, Banerjee said that the state was witnessing the “tragic consequences of the [Bharatiya Janata Party's] politics of fear, division and hate”.

She also appealed to citizens not to be “provoked” or “lose faith” and “take extreme step”.

“[Trinamool Congress government] stands with you,” she said on social media. “We will not allow the NRC to be implemented in Bengal – neither through the front door, nor through the back door.”

Banerjee has repeatedly alleged that the special intensive revision of voter rolls was an attempt to implement the National Register of Citizens “through the backdoor”.

The National Register of Citizens is a proposed exercise to create a list of Indian citizens and to identify undocumented immigrants.

The register was updated in Assam in 2019, after a mammoth scrutiny of ancestral family documents to weed out “illegal immigrants”, and ended up excluding 19 lakh residents of the state. The updated list, however, has not been notified six years on.

Source: Scroll
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