70% of 2.7M voters under adjudication in Bengal are Muslim, study finds

Kolkata: Muslims made up about 70% of the more than 2.7 million electors placed under adjudication during West Bengal’s special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, a Kolkata-based research group said.

The Sabar Institute said women accounted for 51% of voters in the adjudication category. Most were referred for adjudication after being flagged for “logical discrepancies” during the revision process — mismatches such as inconsistent parents’ names, unusually small age gaps with parents, or parental child counts exceeding six.

West Bengal’s final rolls published in February initially excluded more than 6.1 million names, with the exercise proceeding through supplementary lists and adjudication of about 6 million doubtful and pending cases. By April 6, roughly 9.1 million names — about 11.9% of the pre-revision electorate — had been removed.

Ahead of the Assembly elections, around 3.4 million appeals were pending before appellate tribunals, of which about 2.7 million were filed by people excluded from the rolls. The tribunals have so far allowed a small number of names to be restored; 1,607 additions were reported in recent tribunal orders.