Over 70% of Voters Omitted in West Bengal Electoral Revision Are Muslim: Study

More than 70 percent of the over 2.7 million voters placed under "pending" status following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal are Muslims, according to a study by the Sabar Institute.

The report further reveals that women constitute 51 percent of those affected, with the majority of the omitted Muslim voters being Bengalis.

The study highlighted that voters were largely flagged under the guise of "logical discrepancies," citing arbitrary grounds such as spelling mismatches in parents' names or having more than six children. In total, over 9.1 million names—representing more than 8 percent of the state's total electorate—were purged from the primary and supplementary lists. While the Supreme Court mandated tribunals to address around 3.4 million appeals filed by disenfranchised citizens, concerns linger over the slow pace of redressing these grievances and restoring voting rights.