An analysis of electoral revision records in India's West Bengal has found that nearly nine in every 10 voters whom the Election Commission of India (ECI) is seeking to remove from the electoral rolls despite being cleared by judicial officers have Muslim names.
The pattern is evident not only in the state's Muslim-majority border districts but also in Hindu-majority constituencies far from the border, according to an analysis by The Wire.
Appeal records compiled by the Civic Research Group cover 16,08,175 appeals filed against the inclusion of voters whom judges cleared during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. An analysis of their names by The Wire found that at least 14,39,797, or 89.5%, had Muslim names.
According to the 2011 Census, Muslims account for 27% of West Bengal's population and approximately 29% of its electorate.
Grouping constituencies according to their minority population share reveals a substantial disparity between the proportion of voters with Muslim names facing appeals and their share of the local population.
In constituencies where Muslims account for approximately 6% of the population, more than six in 10 voters facing appeals have Muslim names, roughly 10 times their population share. In seats where minorities make up around 15% of the population, the proportion exceeds eight in 10.
In 137 constituencies, at least 90% of the voters facing appeals have Muslim names. Among the 160 constituencies where Muslims constitute less than a fifth of the population, 69 have appeals in which at least 80% of the targeted voters have Muslim names. Across these 160 seats, 2,62,416 voters with Muslim names are facing appeals.
The disparity is particularly pronounced in districts far from the border, where Muslims constitute a relatively small share of the population.
In Purba Medinipur, where Muslims account for approximately one-eighth of the population, more than nine in 10 voters facing appeals have Muslim names. In Egra, where Muslims make up around 8% of the population, the figure stands at 94.9%.
In Chandipur, Kanthi Dakshin and Ramnagar, all in the same district, the proportion ranges between 93% and 95%.
The figures are similarly high in Sagar and Gosaba in the Sundarbans, where 97% and 95% of voters facing appeals, respectively, have Muslim names, although Muslims account for less than 12% of the population in these constituencies.
In Murshidabad, where Muslims make up approximately 60% of the population, 98.2% of the voters facing appeals have Muslim names. The disparity between their share of the targeted voters and their population share is smaller there because Muslims already constitute the majority.
There are, however, constituencies where most voters facing appeals do not have Muslim names. These are largely seats with very small Muslim populations, where the SIR process has also affected voters from other communities.
Even in these constituencies, however, voters with Muslim names are represented in the appeals at rates disproportionate to their population share.
In Krishnaganj, a Scheduled Caste-reserved constituency in Nadia's Matua belt, voters with Muslim names account for 6.5% of those facing appeals, slightly above the community's 5.7% share of the population.
The disparity is considerably wider elsewhere. In Jadavpur, where Muslims account for approximately 1% of the population, 14.2% of voters facing appeals have Muslim names, more than 12 times their population share.
In Nayagram, the figure is 17.1%, compared with a Muslim population share of 1.3%. In Bidhannagar and Habibpur, the proportion is approximately four times the Muslim population share.
In the hill constituencies of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong, there was almost no correspondence between Muslim names and deletion appeals.
Overall, the analysis shows that wherever Muslims constitute a significant part of the population, they dominate the list of voters the Election Commission is seeking to remove. Even in constituencies where they are almost absent, including the Matua belt, Adivasi seats and parts of Kolkata's suburbs, voters with Muslim names appear on the appeals list at rates considerably higher than their share of the surrounding population.
The appeals filed by the Election Commission do not appear to be directly determined by the religious composition of individual constituencies.
The commission appealed against between 46% and 51% of the voters cleared by judicial officers across every group of constituencies, from those with the smallest Muslim populations to those with the largest. The analysis found almost no relationship between a constituency's Muslim population share and the proportion of judicially cleared voters against whom the commission filed appeals.
The difference lies in the composition of the voters who reached this stage of the process.
The records of appeals against inclusion cover only voters whom judicial officers cleared and whose inclusion the Election Commission subsequently challenged. They do not represent all voters cleared by the judges.
A separate set of records, covering appeals filed by voters whose names were struck off by judicial officers, provides a broader picture.
Of the 27,06,057 voters deleted by judicial officers, 22,17,619, or 82%, have appealed to the tribunals. Among these appellants, 79.3% have Muslim names.
An independent analysis by the SABAR Institute points in the same direction. The institute, which has made publicly available a repository of West Bengal's supplementary deletion lists classified by religion and gender, found that Muslims accounted for 70.17% of the more than 27 lakh voters deleted from the 'under adjudication' list. Women made up 51% of those deleted.
Taken together, the two sets of records cover 38,25,794 of the 59,59,458 voters in the constituencies who were referred to judicial officers, representing approximately 64% of the total.
Of those covered by the records, 31,99,122 have Muslim names. Even if none of the remaining voters had Muslim names, at least 53.7% of everyone referred for adjudication would still have Muslim names, nearly twice the community's share of West Bengal's population.
The disparity is also evident when constituencies are grouped by their Muslim population share. In seats where Muslims account for approximately 6% of the population, at least a quarter of the voters referred to judges have Muslim names, four times their population share. In constituencies where Muslims make up around 15% of the population, the figure is at least 43%.
One comparison is particularly notable in constituencies where Muslims account for less than 10% of the population.
Among voters whose names were struck off by judicial officers and who subsequently appealed, approximately one-third have Muslim names. However, among voters cleared by judges against whose inclusion the Election Commission subsequently appealed, more than six in 10 have Muslim names.
The two groups comprise different individuals, and the available data does not establish the religious composition of every voter cleared by judicial officers. However, the comparison shows that in Hindu-majority constituencies, the Election Commission's appeals against judicially cleared voters involved people with Muslim names at a much higher proportion than the appeals filed by voters whose names had been deleted.
The analysis points to the stages preceding the appeals as a key factor in determining which voters were affected.
Voters were referred to judicial officers only after being flagged for 'logical discrepancies' during the revision process. The Election Commission's own ERONET data shows that the approximately 60 lakh voters sent for adjudication corresponded, district by district, to cases flagged by central observers rather than those left undecided by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs).
The appeals were subsequently filed against approximately half of the voters cleared by judicial officers. This group had already been disproportionately composed of voters with Muslim names, not only in the border districts but also in Hindu-majority constituencies.
In its counter-affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on October 26, citing a communication from the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal dated October 22, the Election Commission said the appeals had been filed by "officers of the Office of the CEO, West Bengal, in their capacity as authorities under the RP Act".
It also stated that "these matters were not brought to the Commission".
In the same affidavit, the commission acknowledged that the concerned voters had uploaded their documents to the portal and that "a favourable order passed by the Ld. Judicial Officer" had been issued in their favour.
The Wire has written to the office of the West Bengal CEO and two additional chief electoral officers seeking clarification on several aspects of the appeals.
It has sought the names and designations of the officials who filed them, the specific provision of the Representation of the People Act or the Registration of Electors Rules that authorises officers from the CEO's office to challenge voters in constituencies they do not administer, and the Supreme Court order and specific paragraph on which they relied.
The publication has also asked whether Electoral Registration Officers and Additional Electoral Registration Officers were consulted before appeals were filed against voters on their rolls, what grounds and criteria were used to select the voters, and whether each case was examined individually.
Additionally, it has requested a copy of the October 22 communication cited in the commission's affidavit, along with constituency-wise figures on the number of appeals filed and their outcomes.
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This article was originally published in The Wire. It is republished here under special arrangement and with stylistic changes.