Ahead of Bengal Polls, ECI Deleted 58 Lakh Names From SIR's Draft

A total of 58 lakh names have been deleted from the draft list, including 24 lakh marked as “dead”, 19 lakh as “relocated”, 12 lakh as “missing”, and 1.3 lakh as “duplicate”.

Ahead of the Bengal Assembly polls, a total of 58 lakh names have been deleted from the state's draft voter list after the Special Intensive Revision aimed at removing duplication and errors.

A total of 58 lakh names have been deleted from the draft list, including 24 lakh marked as “dead”, 19 lakh as “relocated”, 12 lakh as “missing”, and 1.3 lakh as “duplicate”.

Along with West Bengal, the draft voters’ lists will also be published during the day for the two other states of Goa and Rajasthan, as well as the two union territories of Puducherry and Lakshadweep.

The number of untraceable voters stands at around 12 lakh. The combined number of duplicate voters having names in two places, as well as voters deemed to be excludable for other reasons, stands at 1.37 lakh.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) also identified around 1.60 crore voters in whose cases the “progeny mapping” identified "weird" family-tree data.

In 2002, the ECI conducted an SIR in West Bengal. Those who are 45 years or older would have become voters in 2002, considering the minimum voting age is 18 years. The question arises as to why such voters, who are 45 years or above, did not enrol themselves as voters in 2002, and hence they had to depend on ‘progeny mapping’ instead of ‘self mapping’ in the ongoing SIR to retain their names in the voters’ list.

Self-mapping voters are those who have names both in the current voters’ list as of October 27, 2025, as well as in the voters’ list in 2002.

On the other hand, progeny-mapping voters are those who do not have their own names but their parents’ names in the voters’ list for 2002.

The second category of such voters with weird family-tree data includes those whose fathers were just 15 years of age or even lower at the time of becoming the fathers of the voters concerned. An instance has already been identified by ECI through progeny mapping, where a particular voter became a father of two sons when he was just five years old.

(With IANS inputs)