Congress Seeks Repoll in Dozens of Bengal Seats Over SIR Voter Deletions

Overview

• Congress, which pressed its case on Wednesday, demanded fresh voting in about 50 West Bengal constituencies and urged the Supreme Court to step in.
• At the heart of the dispute is the Special Intensive Revision, a voter-roll cleanup that removed roughly 91 lakh names in the state and left about 27 lakh people unable to vote while their appeals were pending.
• Independent analyses diverge on impact, with Scroll and The Wire noting many BJP-won seats where deletions exceeded victory margins, while ThePrint found large BJP leads in scores of flipped seats even after exclusions.
• The BJP pushed back and accused Congress of double standards after a Kerala Congress MLA was recorded praising the same revision process for cutting fake voters in his state.
• Appeals from deleted voters are before appellate tribunals after a Supreme Court directive that allowed challenges but barred those appellants from voting, a backlog that could take years and leave outcomes and public trust in limbo.