In West Bengal, the intensely competitive politics has a long and deplorable reputation for violence, dirty tricks and verbal missiles. The kick-off to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, aimed at making sure that they are "pure" - as the Election Commission's slogan insists they will be - has triggered a cascading effect of verbal violence, mass mobilisation, and political initiative, all of which will define the campaign for the 2026 state assembly elections.
The political battle will be dominated by questions around who is a "ghuspaithiya", or illegal migrant, an Indian citizen, and, therefore, a legitimate voter. The change introduced by the Election Commission on the documents that are needed to prove citizenship applies mostly to voters who were not enrolled in the previous SIR in 2003 in West Bengal.
On the one side is the Election Commission; on the other are the Trinamool Congress, the Congress and the Left parties, with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) in the lead. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as the principal opposition and challenger to the reign of Mamata Banerjee as Chief Minister, is a vehement advocate of the SIR process that other parties criticise or oppose, for different reasons, in different ways and to different degrees.
The Contentious 'Anti-SIR' Rally
The configuration of the political fight is exemplified in the contrast between the messages delivered through the Mamata Banerjee-led anti-SIR rally on November 4 on the one hand and, on the other, the BJP's counter-labelling the rally as a "Jamaat-sponsored", "Ghuspaithiya Bachao" march aimed at defending, by implication, Muslim "illegal migrants". It is also about the CPI(M)'s mass mobilisation in support of the freedom to sing Rabindranath Tagore's 'Amar Sonar Bangla' ('My Golden Bengal') without being reviled - as Assam's Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, did recently - for singing the "national anthem of Bangladesh".
In doing so, the BJP ignored the fact that the majority of "illegal migrants", probably several millions, were Hindus. Not just the Matuas - a sect of Schedule Caste Hindus with an estimated 2.5 crore following in mostly West Bengal - and possibly 1.2 to 1.5 crore voters listed in the electoral rolls, but even others who did not come from any specific sect, belong to the "illegal migrant" category. If, as the West Bengal leadership of the BJP has strongly asserted, there are some 2 crore ineligible voters hidden within the electoral rolls, the SIR process becomes more complicated than a hunt for "ghuspaithiyas" or illegal migrants from the Muslim community.
SIR And The CAA
By organising camps to assist Hindu illegal migrants in applying for citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in districts that share a border with Bangladesh and have large Muslim populations, the BJP is leveraging the SIR process to drive support for both CAA and the legitimisation of status it assures. The problem with applying for CAA is disenfranchisement; it could be possibly temporary, but it is nevertheless fear-inducing, especially at a point when elections are in the offing. The spate of suicides in West Bengal after the roll out of SIR was announced is a measure of how emotionally destabilising the process is perceived to be by the public.
The reality is that there are Hindu votes and there are Muslim votes. Neither the Hindu vote nor the Muslim vote is homogenous, though since 2011, the Muslim vote has overwhelmingly gone to the Trinamool Congress. The Hindu vote, on the other hand, has been more widely distributed. Since 2014, the BJP's sharp increase in vote share in both state-level and Lok Sabha elections is a reflection of its consolidation of Hindu votes and the perception that it is an alternative to the Trinamool Congress. In 2024, the gap between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP was eight percentage points, with the regional party getting 46.7% votes and the BJP getting 38.7% votes.
Everyone Will Be Affected...
The exclusion of suspect or ineligible voters under SIR will affect both Hindus and Muslims, which, in turn, will have consequences for the Trinamool Congress and the BJP's outcomes in the 2026 state assembly elections. Depending on who is excluded and where, the 2026 election results in West Bengal could turn out to be unpredictable.
It is impossible to quantify the number of Hindus living in West Bengal who should, strictly speaking, be categorised as 'illegal migrants'. Every political party knows it. The 'naturalisation' of people who fled across the border before and after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 has been a process in which the Congress, the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress have all been involved. The concept of 'vote banks' is not new either; the CPI(M) was charged with creating Muslim vote banks, as was the Congress, and as is the Trinamool Congress. The shift of the 'Muslim vote' away from the CPI(M) to the Trinamool Congress did contribute to the overthrow of the 35-year-long Left rule in West Bengal.
...But Everyone Played Their Part, Too
The 'naturalisation' was not only Muslim appeasement; the issuance of ration cards, later Voter IDs, later still Aadhaar Cards, and even birth certificates and passports happened to regularise the status of migrants who came from across the border with Bangladesh after 1971 or in the waves of arrivals from erstwhile East Pakistan between 1947 and 1971. There was no 'neat' transfer of population between the partitioned parts of erstwhile Bengal.
The power that comes with voting is something that numerically larger voters from economically weaker sections understand very well; they know they have leverage and they know there are benefits that come with their right to vote. The recent fashion of announcing direct cash transfers to sections of voters ahead of elections, as happened in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and now Bihar, has made the vote an even more desirable thing.
Thus, disenfranchisement, whether through the SIR route or application under CAA, is unaffordable for people who have been on the electoral rolls and are beneficiaries under the Mamata Banerjee regime's signature Lakshmir Bhandar, Kanyashree, Swasthya Sathi health schemes on the one hand and the Centrally sponsored housing and free ration programmes as well as MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) on the other. Being a ghuspaithiya is not only about identity; it is also about entitlements that come with citizenship.
(Shikha Mukherjee is a senior journalist based in Kolkata.The views expressed are personal)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author​​​​
