The Election Commission of India’s (ECI) newly released draft roll from the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal is challenging one of the most frequently used political talking points in the state.
Mandated by the ECI to map current voters to the data from the 2002 electoral rolls, the exercise demolishes the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s ongoing propaganda of “illegal Bangladeshi” or “Rohingya” voters in minority-heavy border belts.
A constituency-level analysis covering all 294 assembly constituencies finds the opposite pattern. The state’s rural minority population is its most documented demographic, while the “citizenship crisis” has shifted squarely onto Hindu refugees and the urban workforce.
Under the 2025 SIR architecture, voters are asked to link (“map”) their presence in the current roll to a legacy anchor – with the 2002 electoral roll functioning as the main historical database.
Those “who cannot be linked” land in the “No Mapping” category, often triggering compulsory hearings and higher documentary burdens to establish eligibility. At the same time, deletions are being recorded separately under the “ASD” acronym which comprises absent, shifted, dead or duplicate voters.
Here are the five key takeaways from an initial analysis of SIR 2025 in West Bengal.
Minorities are the most documented
The most explosive finding is the statistical demolition of the “illegal immigrant” hypothesis. BJP’s political narrative has long suggested that minority-dominated border districts are hubs of undocumented migration. The SIR data proves the exact opposite. These districts have the highest rates of valid documentation.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Murshidabad, a district repeatedly invoked in political rhetoric due to its proximity to Bangladesh. However, contrary to propaganda, the border location plus a high minority share in the district does not translate into reality. Multiple constituencies with predominantly Muslim populations show negligible No Mapping rates. Domkal (77.67% Muslim) records just 0.42%, Raninagar (75.40% Muslim) sits at 0.91%, and Hariharpara (74.96% Muslim) is at 0.60%.
This data indicates that the agrarian minority population possesses deep ancestral roots and robust legacy documentation, allowing for easier mapping to the 2002 cutoff. Statistical stress tests confirm this trend, showing a negative correlation between minority population percentage and documentation failure, thereby leaving the illegal immigrant narrative without any statistical foothold.
The Matua situation: Refugees face disenfranchisement
The sharpest concentration of high No Mapping rates is in constituencies dominated by the Matua community, a Dalit refugee-origin population that has been central to BJP’s political strategy in the border districts.
An analysis of a 17-seat Matua-focused list spanning Nadia and North 24 Parganas reveals a striking demographic reality: the mean No Mapping rate in these constituencies stands at 9.47%, significantly higher than the statewide average of 4.05%. These seats are demographically distinct, characterised by a significant Scheduled Caste population (average SC population of 36.39%) and a relatively low minority share of 13.66%.
Stark examples from the dataset highlight this trend. Gaighata, the community’s spiritual headquarters near the Indo-Bangladesh border in North 24 Parganas, has a staggering 14.51% (38,490 votes) No Mapping rate despite having only a 7.61% minority population, and neighbouring Bagda (SC) showing a 12.69% (36567 voters) unmapped rate against a minority share of 11.97%.
The 2002 cutoff acts as a structural barrier for Hindu refugees who arrived post-1971 or fled later persecution. The SIR effectively functions as a filter for refugee displacement history, creating an existential crisis for the very demographic the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was purported to protect.
This data exposes a profound political irony, as the population most affected by the SIR’s legacy linkage is not the stereotyped “outsider Muslim infiltrator” of BJP speeches, but Hindu refugees who arrived post-1971 or fled later persecution. The 2002 linkage in SIR effectively functions as a “citizenship trap” for Matua refugees, an administrative design that cuts directly across the BJP’s own “CAA-protection” messaging in these critical belts.
Urban hollowing out: The ghost voter purge
Away from the border, a massive “hollowing out” of West Bengal’s urban and industrial centres is driven by economic migration rather than citizenship anomalies. The data shows catastrophic deletion rates in Kolkata, far outpacing any rural district.
Jorasanko, Kolkata’s commercial hub with a significant Hindi-speaking population and highly cosmopolitan Chowrangee recorded deletion rates of 36.85% and 35.46%, respectively, meaning over one-third of the electorate has been removed.
The trend is equally visible at the district level, with Kolkata North recording a 25.93% deletion rate and Kolkata South 23.83%.
Crucially, this pattern cuts across demographic lines. High deletion rates persist regardless of whether the minority population is negligible like Shyampukur and Rashbehari or substantial like Kolkata Port and Ballygunge, proving that urban instability, not religion, is the primary driver. These mixed-language trade and service hubs experience rapid roll turnover as populations shift, making the city’s cosmopolitan core, rather than the border, the true epicenter of SIR disruption.
However, this massive administrative cleanup introduces significant volatility into the upcoming election arithmetic. If deletions disproportionately remove duplicates or long-absent names, the actual electorate in these urban seats could shrink dramatically, fundamentally altering turnout calculations and victory margins.
A reverse migration signature appears in the industrial belt
A clear reverse-migration signature is visible in West Bengal’s industrial belt, especially in constituencies with large Hindi-speaking migrant-worker populations. The draft SIR figures repeatedly show a combined pattern of moderate-to-high No Mapping alongside high deletion rates, which aligns more with economic out-migration and workforce instability than with any border-linked anomaly.
In the Barrackpore-Howrah industrial corridor, traditionally anchored by jute mills, auxiliary factories, construction sites and dense rental settlements, seats such as Bally (19.51% deletions, 17.81% No Mapping) and Howrah Uttar (26.95%, 12.42%) display the same churn profile seen in other working-class industrial pockets like Bhatpara (20.38%, 9.3%) and Asansol Uttar (14.71%, 8.74%)
Deletions surge as electors are tagged “permanently shifted,” while No Mapping numbers are high because many older voters find it difficult to link to legacy rolls after years of renting, shifting between bustees and worksites, or maintaining multiple addresses across districts. As mills shrink, construction cycles end, and urban rents push families outward, more workers quietly drop off the rolls or return to home states, leaving behind a broken documentation trail that the SIR process registers as both mapping failure and mass deletion.
As a result, the industrial and commuter belts have emerged as the revision’s one of the most severe administrative shock zones, shaped largely by reverse migration and relentless economic churn.
Administrative filtering targets ‘rootlessness,’ not religion
Ultimately, the SIR 2025 acts as a test of stability, not religion. The statistical patterns provide the final verdict on the exercise’s true impact. The data confirms that high rates of No Mapping, meaning a lack of legacy documents, go hand-in-hand with urbanisation and refugee populations, but have no connection to the minority percentage. In fact, documentation errors are consistently lower in minority-dominated areas. In reality, the process effectively filters for “rootlessness.” It disproportionately flags refugees who lost their documents during displacement and urban workers who move frequently, while validating the citizenship status of the settled rural population. The “illegal immigrant” narrative, when tested against these hard numbers, dissolves completely.
As the state heads toward the 2026 elections, the battle lines have shifted. The issue is no longer just about who gets to vote, but the validation of the voter themselves, with the data proving that those accused of being “outsiders” are, in fact, the most settled insiders of all.
Courtesy: The Wire