In a serious administrative lapse, at least twenty eligible voters from Kolkata's Behala West assembly constituency found themselves stripped of their voting rights after being erroneously declared deceased or deleted from the electoral rolls. The incident, which has sparked allegations of rights violation, centers around the Roy Bahadur Road area and has prompted intervention from a local councillor.
Voters Wrongfully Declared Deceased
The affected individuals, whose names were correctly listed in the electoral roll published in January 2025, were shockingly not provided any voter enumeration form. Nine of these voters had their names featured in the electoral rolls as far back as the SIR 2002 list, establishing their long-standing status as electors. All of them, who were incorrectly marked as 'dead' or 'deleted', asserted that they made repeated attempts to obtain the necessary forms but were consistently denied.
An Election Commission official confirmed the discrepancy, stating that the names were deleted due to an unexplained error. The official solution offered was for the voters to submit Form 6, an application for inclusion of name in the electoral roll, to be considered for the final list slated for publication in February.
Political Representative Raises Alarm
Trinamool Congress councillor and Kolkata Municipal Corporation MMiC, Tarak Singh, took up the issue formally. He wrote to the Behala West Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) on December 5, urging immediate action to prevent harassment of the affected voters. In his letter, Singh squarely placed the blame on the Election Commission's fault, stating, "Due to the fault of the EC, these voters were shown as dead/deleted due to wrong entry... depriving them of their voting rights."
Singh highlighted that despite several representations made by the voters to the EC, the twenty individuals were not given forms. He also alleged that the ERO remained inactive during the Summary Revision of the electoral roll process, which continued until December 11. Most of the disenfranchised voters hail from KMC wards 118 and 119.
Legal Violation and Escalation
Following the lack of resolution, Councillor Tarak Singh escalated the matter on Tuesday, writing to Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal, special roll observer Subrata Gupta, and again to the Behala West ERO. He demanded the restoration of the wrongly deleted names, emphasizing that these were not deceased persons. "It is an utter violation of the People's Representation Act 1950 and 1951," Singh declared in his communication.
The issue has also been brought to the notice of the roll observer for South Kolkata and South 24-Parganas, C Murugan. Taking cognizance, Murugan has asked for a detailed report from the Alipore Sub-Divisional Officer regarding the exact number of names that have been deleted in this manner. This move indicates a higher-level scrutiny of the potentially widespread error that could impact voter participation in the upcoming electoral process.
