San Francisco [USA], May 11 : Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has raised pointed questions over the electoral process in West Bengal, suggesting that large-scale deletions from voter rolls and delayed verification of appeals may have had a decisive impact on the state's election outcome.
Referring to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, Tharoor said around 91 lakh names were struck off the lists, with approximately 34 lakh individuals filing appeals claiming they were genuine voters. He noted that only a small number of these cases were adjudicated before polling, leaving the vast majority unresolved at the time of voting.
Speaking at the 'India, That is Bharat' roundtable during the Stanford India Conference, Tharoor said, "In the matter of the SIR, what I have said is a legitimate question to answer. Look at the Bengal case. 91 lakh names were struck off the rolls. Of those, 34 lakh living human beings have appealed, saying that they are around and they are legitimately entitled to vote. The rules have required each case to be adjudicated individually, so only a few hundred were adjudicated before the vote. To this day, there are some 31, 32 lakh people who might be found to have been legitimate voters in the remaining years while adjudication carries on, but they have missed their chance to vote."
Drawing attention to the scale of the figures, he observed that the BJP's victory margin, around 30 lakh votes, closely aligns with the number of pending voter appeals, raising questions about whether eligible voters were effectively unable to cast their ballots.
"And the BJP won Bengal by a margin of 30 lakh votes. Now you tell me, is that entirely fair and democratic? This is the question that I ask. Honestly, I have no problem with deleting spurious, deleted, absent, migrated voters," Tharoor said.
Further, Tharoor suspected that the removal of duplicate or multiple voter registrations in Kerala, where he claimed instances of double, triple, and even quadruple enrolments had existed in the past, may have worked in favour of the Congress party by cleaning up inflated voter lists historically associated with rival political practices.
"And particularly in Kerala, I suspect the Congress benefited from the deletions because the CPM was long a past master of double enrollment, triple enrollment, quadruple enrollmentthe same people in four different booths and so on. That used to happen. And so they were eliminated by the SIR, and as you said, in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, there were very few appeals. But in Bengal, there is no doubt that there were 34 lakh appeals. And that's 34 lakh forms filled by 34 lakh individuals. And of that, only a few hundred have been heard," he said.
The BJP secured a historic victory in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections, winning 207 seats and ending the Trinamool Congress's 15-year rule in the state. The TMC secured 80 seats in the elections.
After the verdict, the BJP has formed its government in West Bengal for the first time, with Suvendu Adhikari leading the charge with the Chief Minister post.
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