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Bahrampur: Razzak Sheikh, a resident of Mekhliganj in Cooch Behar district, has come to Bahrampur with his whole family, including women, for they have each received notices to appear at an electoral roll-related hearing. “After coming here, I see that the line is mostly made up of people from the Muslim community,” Sheikh says. “I work at an organisation in Katihar [in Bihar] and had to take leave to come here,” he says.

Election officials deny that the hearing process under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal has disproportionately targeted Muslims. Instead, Booth Level Officers (BLO), appointed to conduct the process on the ground, describe a narrow set of technical criteria that has been leading people – like Sheikh and his family – to designated hearing centres, often far away from their homes.

“The issues include having multiple children, inconsistencies in the age gap between parents and children and spelling mistakes in names,” one BLO said.

The SIR exercise has resulted in severe overcrowding at hearing centres, leaving both voters and officials struggling. Over 80,000 BLOs have been deployed across the state, the majority of them government school teachers, who have been diverted from their classrooms over extended periods.

In several parts of Cooch Behar district, the numbers raise questions. “In many booths with around 700 voters, the [Election] Commission has called over 250 people for hearings. Out of these, 70 per cent are from minority communities,” said farmer activist Akik Hossain, suggesting that the pattern extends even to the state’s border regions.

In Sitai, fifty-eight-year-old Anisa Parvin stood in a government queue for the first time in her life, not counting the times when she voted. She had come to correct her name by adding........

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