Md Anikul Hoque, a migrant labourer from Samserganj in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district, has waited through many crises. He stood in queues for food, water, and cash during demonetisation in 2016. He worked through the Covid-19 lockdown inside sealed buildings in Odisha “like a thief in a prison” waiting to return home. But this time it is different. 

After a controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise erased his name from the voter rolls, Hoque is trapped in a new state of anxiety. With his appeal still pending before an appellate tribunal, he is awaiting the restoration of his voting rights so that he can return to work. Since returning home for Eid, the Samserganj resident has been forced to roll beedis for a living, slashing his income by half. Afraid that his deleted status will mark him as a target, Hoque refuses to leave the state for work. For him, losing his vote is synonymous with losing his ability to earn a livelihood. 

“Obviously, there is fear. Even when we had the necessary documents, we were branded as Bangladeshis in many states for merely speaking in Bengali. Now that my name has been removed from the voter list, there is a greater chance of that happening,” says Hoque, who has worked in Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, and Tamil Nadu, speaking to Newslaundry. 

Eight out of nine voters in his family have had their names struck off from the electoral rolls. In a copy of the letter submitted to their local Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), the reason for their removal states: “linked with someone, who is claimed by 6 others as parent.” However, Hoque claims that his family has all the requisite documents. 

Md Anikul Hoque outside his home in Murshidabad's Samserganj. Eight of the nine voters in his family were removed from the electoral rolls.

The family’s struggles depict the electoral mayhem in Samserganj, a Muslim-dominated constituency, which has recorded the highest number of deletions of those ‘under adjudication’ in West Bengal. 

Critics of the Bengal SIR have raised concerns that ECI’s electoral roll revision is becoming a process for determining citizenship. Political activist Yogendra Yadav, who has been closely following the SIR developments, said the roll revision process “has challenged constitutional values.” Last week, activists in Kolkata reiterated that the poll panel “has no jurisdiction to determine citizenship.”

In Samserganj, the Election Commission placed roughly 45 percent (1,08,400) of the total 2,35,944 voters under adjudication. Of those, officials deleted 74,775 names – nearly 69 percent. The purge hit Hoque’s booth even harder: authorities removed 97.8 percent of those under adjudication, leaving only 12 names out of 551. 

“We have to furnish our documents wherever we work. Otherwise, they won’t employ us. We have to show our Aadhaar card, PAN card, or voter ID card… What if they find out that our names were deleted? We have lost all sleep, afraid of what’s next,” remarks Hoque.

The Election Commission struck over 27 lakh names from West Bengal’s final voter list following adjudication. On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that individuals cleared by appellate tribunals can vote in the upcoming polls, directing the ECI to issue supplementary rolls with cut-off dates of April 21 and April 27 for the two polling phases, respectively. However, the delayed establishment of these tribunals, coupled with the volume of cases, has effectively turned the right to appeal into a race against time. 

This logjam effectively traps Bengal’s migrant workers, whose names were deleted, in a state of precarity. Most of these workers hail from Murshidabad and Malda – the state's primary hubs for migrant workers. These two........

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