“From day one I maintained that SIR was always meant for Bengal. Bihar was just the testing ground,” says activist Yogendra Yadav. | Photo credit: Moyurie Som.
Psephologist and activist Yogendra Yadav and economist Parakala Prabhakar were among public intellectuals who predicted “the biggest disenfranchisement in the history of the nation” in West Bengal due to the ongoing Special Intensive Review (SIR) of voter lists, claiming that the exercise is part of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s “misuse of state machinery” ahead of the Assembly elections in the state.
“From day one I have maintained that SIR was always meant for Bengal. Bihar was just the testing ground…SIR is a votebandi exercise aimed at undermining the universality of universal adult voting rights in India,” Yadav said, while addressing a public event in Kolkata organized by civil society groups, The Educationists’ Forum, West Bengal and Desh Bachao Gano Mancha, on Saturday (November 22, 2025).
If the number of deletions from the electoral roll reaches one crore, as predicted by BJP leaders including Suvendu Adhikari, leader of the opposition in the State Assembly, West Bengal will “witness the biggest disenfranchisement in the history of India, if not the world,” Yadav said.
“Bengal is the objective”
“It is no secret that the BJP is desperate to win Bengal. They would use unlimited money and power and abuse the state machinery to achieve this, without scruple… Bengal is really the target of the SIR. The delimitations will come later, but it is clearly an instrument to reduce the electoral weight of those states where the BJP is not sure of its support,” the political activist said.
Citing the Assam Accord and the Supreme Court’s October 2024 judgment on foreign migrants in Assam, Yadav said if the Election Commission was concerned about illegal migrants or refugees, “Assam should have been the first state to conduct the SIR exercise.”
On October 27, the Election Commission of India announced the SIR of voter lists in nine states and three Union Territories, including West Bengal, after the completion of the exercise in Bihar.
‘Bloodless political genocide’
At Saturday’s event, economist Prabhakar called SIR a “bloodless political genocide” aimed at depriving large numbers of people of the fundamental political right to vote and eliminating significant participants in the political process.
He said the removal of dead, duplicate and permanently displaced voters should not take into account religion, ethnicity or language groups. The process of completing the registration form will be exclusive for the weaker sectors of society who are deprived of education and resources, he stated.
“We are all used to the voters electing the government. With SIR, it is the government that is now trying to elect the voters… SIR is an assault on the constitutional values, the constitutional spirit and the constitutional morality of India. Let us not confuse it just with a reform or cleansing or purification of the electoral rolls. In fact, it is a political cleansing of India,” Mr. Prabhakar said.
‘Back door entry for NRC, CAA’
He alleged that the failures in the exercise and the deletions after the SIR in Bihar show that the exercise “is not aimed at cleaning up the electoral rolls”. In October, before the Supreme Court, Mr. Yadav, a petitioner, had claimed that there were more than five lakh duplicate voters in the final electoral roll of Bihar, after the SIR.
“When the government tried to introduce the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act, there was a massive outcry in the country. They could not go ahead… This is nothing but the backdoor entry of NRC-CAA in the form of SIR to weed out ‘those’ people who they feel should not be here,” Mr. Prabhakar said.
‘Control instrument’
Academic and political activist Om Prakash Mishra claimed that the SIR would give rise to the world’s largest disenfranchised population, in India.
“The reason why this revision of the voter list is called ‘special’ is because it is used as a political instrument. [SIR] It is an instrument of control, it is the instrument of exclusion. It is going to undermine India’s democratic and pluralistic traditions and completely erode trust in India’s democracy as far as the outside world is concerned,” Mishra said.
He added that West Bengal will “lead the fight against those manipulating the constitutional order” and that civil society groups will become even more active after the draft electoral roll is published on December 9.
Published – Nov 22, 2025 09:43 pm IST
