Election Commission Scans 2,208 Bengal Booths with ‘Perfect’ Voter Lists During Special Intensive Revision (SIR)

The Election Commission (EC) has now embarked on special supervision and demanded comprehensive reports on 2,208 polling booths in West Bengal where all voter enumeration forms have been submitted and no record of a dead, duplicate or untraceable voter could be found. This abnormally clean data has aroused suspicions in EC officials who were quoted stating that the situation has placed the State in turmoil in the context of the current Special Intensive Revision (SIR) stage.

The SIR is the most significant exercise to clean up the electoral roll prior to the 2026 assembly elections and an exercise that has elicited a lot of criticism on the part of opposition parties who have claimed that the current inflated electoral roll is skewed in favour of the ruling party.

EC Concerns and Data Breakdown: EC sources reported that the possibility of such a high number of booths all having zero discrepancies was statistically insignificant, prompting them to request a review by an interested party, the district officials. The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal has been asked to furnish a report on whether the names of the dead voters are still present in the rolls.

The highest number of these suspicious booths are located in:

South 24 Parganas: 760 booths

Purulia: 228 booths

Murshidabad: 226 booths

Howrah: 94 booths

Kolkata: 1 booth

Currently, West Bengal operates with over 78,000 polling booths across 294 assembly constituencies .

Opposition Reaction and Allegations: The results contributed to escalating the political opposition to the revision process, and the opposition parties raised a significant concern regarding the credibility of the data used.

Suvendu Adhikari: The Opposition Leader in the West Bengal Assembly asked the ECI to audit the 1.25 crore entries in the enumeration form carried out by three separate days implying that this may be a “scam” orchestrated by a nexus between the ruling party and administration. He suggested the application of modern technology, potentially, AI-based systems that the EC has been contemplating to review in detail.

BJP Leadership: BJP leaders, including Sajal Ghosh, came out publicly to pronounce the listed so-called perfect figures as doubtful and insisted that the process be immediately reviewed, and state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya threatened that any move by the TMC to paralyze the process would constitute the complete breakdown of the constitutional machinery.

SIR Progress and Extended Deadlines:

As of Monday noon, the 27th day of the SIR process which began on November 4, a total of 7,65,62,486 forms had been distributed, covering 99.90% of the state’s total voters. Of these, 7,38,57,023 forms (96.37%) had been digitally uploaded.

The EC also added days to several important deadlines in nine states and three union territories, such as West Bengal, following allegations by the opposition parties of tight timetables putting ground-level officers at a disadvantage. The new schedule is as follows:

Form Distribution Extended To: December 11 (from December 4)

Draft Voter List Publication: December 16 (from December 9)

Final Voter List Publication: February 14, 2026 (from February 7, 2026)