‘West Bengal election was not legally valid’: Former Indian election chief on mass voter deletions
Former Chief Election Commissioner of India S.Y. Quraishi has questioned the legal validity of the 2026 West Bengal Assembly election, citing large-scale voter deletions from the state's electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
“I believe it wasn’t,” Quraishi said on Thursday, November 6, while delivering the Hashim Abdul Halim memorial lecture in Kolkata.
In a report, Indian news outlet The Wire quoted Quraishi as saying that the issue was already before the Supreme Court, which would have to make the final decision.
He stopped short of demanding that the entire election be declared invalid, but urged the court to examine constituencies where large numbers of Muslim voters were allegedly removed from the electoral rolls.
He said he had read reports of 70-80% of Muslim voters being deleted in 49 constituencies and called for those areas to be examined first.
Calls SIR ‘NRC through the front door’
Quraishi sharply criticised the SIR exercise, comparing it to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) process in Assam, which left around 19 lakh people out of the state's final register published in 2019.
“Many people asked me, is the SIR NRC through the back door? My answer is that SIR is NRC through the front door,” he said, describing the exercise as even more extensive in its implications.
He questioned the requirement for voters to establish their links with the 2002 electoral roll, arguing that the process could unfairly affect legitimate Indian citizens who had not voted that year or whose parents were no longer alive.
Quraishi also criticised the Election Commission's proposal to restore deleted names through Form 6, an application intended for new voter registration.
He argued that the form requires applicants to declare that they are new voters and are not registered elsewhere, making it inappropriate for people who have already voted in multiple elections.
“How can I, who has voted 10-15 times, call myself a new voter? But I am being forced to,” he said.
He called for a fast and effective mechanism to restore the names of voters wrongly removed from electoral rolls.
Questions appeal process and judicial response
The former election chief also raised concerns about the process of appealing against voter deletions, saying it could place an unreasonable burden on poor and migrant workers.
Referring to workers from West Bengal employed in his neighbourhood in Gurugram, Haryana, he said many had returned to their home state to protect their voting rights.
He questioned how workers earning modest monthly salaries could afford to travel long distances to correct their records within short deadlines.
Citing an estimate, Quraishi said it could take 21 years to resolve appeals involving 25-27 lakh deleted voters. Even doubling the number of tribunals from 19 to 40, he said, could leave the process taking around 14 years.
He also criticised judicial remarks suggesting that people excluded from the electoral rolls could vote in the next election.
Questioning the decision to assign judicial officers to verify voters' credentials, he argued that courts should instead ensure that the executive performs its responsibilities properly.
Quraishi warned that voter-list deletions could have consequences beyond the right to vote, citing concerns over passport renewals and access to welfare benefits for people whose names were removed.
Criticises Election Commission's decision-making
Quraishi also questioned the functioning of the Election Commission of India, referring to reports by The Indian Express about disagreements between Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the two other election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.
He said the commission operates as a three-member body and decisions should be taken collectively, through consensus or majority voting.
“The Chief Election Commissioner is not the Election Commission,” he said, arguing that the chief election commissioner could not independently represent the entire institution.
He praised the two election commissioners for documenting their objections to decisions taken by the chief election commissioner, saying their records had helped bring the matter before the Supreme Court.
Quraishi also called for reforms in the appointment of election commissioners, criticising the current selection panel comprising the prime minister, a Union minister nominated by him and the leader of the opposition.
He argued that the government effectively holds a two-to-one majority in the selection process, raising questions about the independence of appointments.
Among his proposed reforms were continuous revisions of electoral rolls, transparent publication of changes and an efficient system for restoring wrongly deleted voter names.
At the same event, former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh spoke about the importance of protecting constitutional values and secularism.
“India has to be secular. This cultural diversity is our strength,” she said, according to The Wire.