Bengal SIR: Number of voters declines for first time after constant steep rise since 2011

West Bengal recorded its first voter decline after Special Intensive Revision, dropping to 6.75 crore due to removal of duplicate, shifted, and deceased entries. The trend reverses steady growth since 2011 under Mamata Banerjee-led governance

Kolkata: The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal has concluded following the release of the final supplementary list. Statistical analysis indicates that this marks the first instance of a decline in the number of voters in the state, following a steep and continuous increase since 2011, the year which marked the conclusion of the 34-year Left Front government and the onset of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress governance in the state.

According to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, in the regime-changing year of 2011, the state went for Assembly polls with a total of around 5.62 crore voters.

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In 2014, when the Lok Sabha polls were conducted, the number of voters in West Bengal increased to around 6.27 crore. In fact, during the period, for the first time, the principal opposition parties in West Bengal alleged that although new or first-time voters were included in the voters’ list, the names of “deceased”, “shifted”, “missing”, and “duplicate” voters were not eliminated from the list.

Again, in 2016, when the Assembly polls in the state were held, marking the return of the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal with a bigger majority in the House, the number of voters increased to around 6.58 crore.

In 2019, the year of the Lok Sabha polls, West Bengal went to polls with an increased voters’ strength of 6.98 crore, which subsequently increased to 7.33 crore in 2021, marking the return of the Trinamool Congress regime for the third consecutive term in the state.

Finally, during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the number of voters in West Bengal had increased to 7.60 crore. The trend, as per the figures available from the CEO’s office, shows that between 2011 and 2024, there has been a steady rise in the number of voters, and not even once has any decline in the trend been noticed. However, following the SIR, which started in November last year and was finally completed this month, the total number of voters in West Bengal had declined to 6.75 crore.

Poll analysts feel that the perpetually upward graph in voters’ graph from 2011 to 2024 indicates that while the new and first-time voters kept on getting added to the list, there was no parallel elimination of the “deceased”, “shifted”, “missing”, and “duplicate” voters from the list.

“However, in course of the SIR exercise this time, there has been a large scale deletion of ‘deceased’, ‘shifted’, ‘missing’, ‘duplicate’ as well as ‘bogus’ voters, which has resulted into such a drastic decline in the number of voters, amid the two-phase Assembly polls in the state later this month,” said a city-based poll analyst.