New Delhi: The overhaul of the electoral roll in West Bengal could start as soon as this month, state officials have been informed by the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal, who represents the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the state.

Two state officials present in the virtual conference held by the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal have independently confirmed to The Reporters’ Collective that orders to undertake the Special Intensive Revision in West Bengal could come within this fortnight. Both preferred to remain anonymous because they are not authorised to speak on it.

“In the virtual conference, we were told to start preparing for it. Written orders should come soon,” one of them said.

ECI’s Special Intensive Revision is an unprecedented revision of electoral rolls, first ordered for Bihar on June 24. The revision requires verifying voters from scratch. In Bihar, the ECI has mandated different levels of scrutiny of documents for different classes of voters — a first in Indian electoral political history. It has ordered the exercise to be completed in a short period of three months. Alongside, it has emphasised that the citizenship of people should be verified through the process, and it has limited the documents people can produce to prove their citizenship and right to vote.

“We have not been told as yet whether, in West Bengal, like in Bihar, the ECI will mandate different kinds of documentary evidence from different sets of people. It would be a serious problem if they do,” said the second official The Collective spoke to.

“The likelihood is we will have a little more time than Bihar to complete the exercise because in October we have our main festivities,” he said.

West Bengal could face the same predicament as Bihar. The state recently completed a full special summary revision of its electoral roll and would now be forced by the Election Commission to junk the entire exercise and build the voter base from scratch, with months to go for the assembly elections.

The assembly elections in West Bengal are to be held before May 2026.

“While we were not told the timeframe specifically, from the conversation, it seems we will also get a short timeframe for the entire overhaul. An intensive revision is, going by law, an exercise of registering the voters de novo,” he said.

Apprehending that West Bengal was the next target of the Election Commission of India after Bihar for the voter list overhaul, Mahua Moitra, a Member of Parliament from Trinamool Congress, has filed a petition against such an unprecedented Special Intensive Revision of the electoral roll in the state before the Supreme Court. Manoj Jha, a Member of Parliament for Rashtriya Janata Dal, had also filed a petition in the Supreme Court soon after the revision exercise began in Bihar. 

Nine other opposition parties from the INDIA alliance, including the Indian National Congress, have also filed a petition challenging the Election Commission’s sudden decision to undertake the electoral revision in this manner. Besides the political parties, the Association for Democratic Rights, a civil society election watchdog organisation, too, has opposed the move before the apex court. The case is listed to be heard for the first time on July 10.

The Controversy 

The special intensive revision that the ECI has ordered is not described in either the rules or the manuals of the Commission.

Unlike a regular revision of voter lists that is conducted by the state’s election apparatus each year to account for deaths, migration, urbanisation, or newly eligible voters, this is a de novo exercise, where election authorities create voter lists from scratch. The Commission claims that this special class of revision needs to be conducted because they are encountering significant shifts in the electoral roll.

The Collective’s previous report found that the Commission’s argument did not hold for Bihar. It can be read here.

Bihar’s latest revision exercise, which was a Special Summary Revision held at the end of last year, captured no particular anomalies to raise alarm. Key parameters to check the health of the electoral roll, such as population-to-voter ratio, were in the same range as the final rolls of 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021.

Like Bihar, West Bengal too has been conducting regular revisions of its electoral rolls. It concluded its special summary revision last year, and the final electoral roll was published on January 6, 2025. Booth-level officers also confirmed with The Collective of having taken part in the exercise.

Unlike Bihar, where both the draft and the final electoral rolls were made available by the ECI, the finalised rolls of January 2025 for West Bengal are not available on its state or central website. The office of the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal is also mandated to publish booth-level lists of claims for additions and deletions, which are regularly submitted by electors to update the voter roll. These, too, have not been made publicly available.

However, The Collective could access and review some of the voter lists for select districts of West Bengal. We could also secure records to show that, so far, the January 2025 list was being accepted by the ECI as a legitimate basis to do the regular updates.

“We completed the exercise as scheduled. If and when the ECI orders come for the SIR, it would mean that the January 2025 electoral roll list is to be discarded as faulty,” one official said.

“One could argue that over the decades, there has been slippage in the annual review process, and therefore, an intensive revision has to be undertaken. An intensive revision means registering each voter afresh. But, the way it's being done in Bihar is incorrect. One cannot ask one set of voters to be considered legitimate voters just because they are on some decades-old voter list and say that all others should prove their identities and citizenship afresh based on specific documentary proof,” the other official said.

The Collective sent questions to the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal for the story. We did not receive a response by the time of publication. The story will be updated if we do.

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Our investigation into Bihar Electoral Roll revision can be read here.