Kolkata, 28 February (H.S.): A massive revision of the electoral rolls in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s high-profile constituency, Bhawanipur, has ignited a fierce political row in West Bengal ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections. According to the final voter list published on Saturday, a staggering 47,094 names have been deleted from the South Kolkata segment following a Special Internal Revision (SIR).
The scale of the reduction has shifted the political calculus in the state, as the number of deleted voters closely rivals the Chief Minister’s 2021 by-poll victory margin of approximately 58,000 votes.
Significant Decline in Voter Base
The revision process, which commenced on November 4, has drastically altered the demographic landscape of the constituency. At the start of the exercise, Bhawanipur recorded 206,295 registered voters. However, following the draft list in December and the final verification concluded this Saturday, the total count has seen a sharp decline.
In addition to the confirmed deletions, the Election Commission has placed 14,154 voters under the ‘Under Adjudication’ category. These individuals face further document verification, and should their names also be removed, the total voter base in Bhawanipur could shrink by over 60,000 names.
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BJP Issues Direct Challenge
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has seized upon these figures to launch a blistering attack on the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC). State BJP President Sukanta Majumdar justified the deletions, asserting that the removed names belonged to either deceased individuals or fake voters who had been inflating the rolls for years.
“With these fake names gone, the ground reality has changed. I challenge the Chief Minister to show the courage to contest from Bhawanipur again,” Majumdar stated. Echoing this sentiment, Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari dared Mamata Banerjee to seek re-election from the same seat, claiming that the artificial electoral advantage she once enjoyed has now evaporated.
Bhawanipur has long been considered the citadel of the Trinamool Congress, having sent Mamata Banerjee to the Assembly multiple times. In the 2021 by-election, she secured a decisive win with a margin of 58,835 votes against the BJP’s Priyanka Tibrewal.
The current revision is part of a statewide effort to sanitize voter lists before the 2026 polls. However, the concentration of deletions in this specific VVIP constituency has turned a routine administrative procedure into a focal point of the state's polarized political narrative. While the TMC has yet to issue a detailed formal rebuttal to the specific figures, the BJP’s aggressive stance suggests that voter list integrity will be a primary campaign plank in the months to come.
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Hindusthan Samachar / Satya Prakash Singh
