Kolkata, December 17, 2025: The Trinamool Congress has decided to undertake a fresh door-to-door verification exercise in Bhabanipur, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Assembly constituency, after a significant drop in voter numbers was reflected in the draft electoral rolls released under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process.
Party sources said booth-level agents have been directed to physically verify the names of voters removed from the rolls, following the deletion of nearly 45,000 electors from the constituency. Election Commission data show that Bhabanipur had 2,06,295 registered voters in January 2025. The draft rolls now list 1,61,509 voters, indicating that 44,787 names around 21.7 per cent of the electorate have been struck off.
The draft electoral rolls for West Bengal were published on Tuesday after the SIR exercise, during which more than 58 lakh voters were removed across the state due to reasons such as death, migration and prolonged absence. The revision is being carried out in the run-up to the 2026 Assembly elections.
The scale of deletions has caused concern within the ruling party, with senior TMC leaders questioning the classification of a large number of voters as “dead”, “shifted” or “absent”. A party leader said the leadership has conveyed that no genuine voter’s name should be removed without proper ground-level verification and that every deletion must be scrutinised carefully.
Bhabanipur comprises Kolkata Municipal Corporation wards 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77 and 82. According to party sources, wards 70, 72 and 77 have witnessed particularly high deletions, with ward 77 a minority-dominated area identified for focused verification.
The constituency is densely populated and has a sizeable number of residents originally from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha. The party believes this demographic factor may have led to several voters being marked as shifted or absent during the revision process.
With the claims and objections phase set to begin shortly, the TMC has asked its local leadership to remain actively engaged in assisting affected voters. Party units have been instructed to continue organising neighbourhood-level ‘May I Help You’ camps to help residents with documentation, form submissions and hearings before election authorities. Volunteers have also been asked to conduct home visits wherever required.
Bhabanipur’s situation reflects a broader trend in south Kolkata. Draft rolls indicate that four key Assembly constituencies Bhabanipur, Kolkata Port, Ballygunge and Rashbehari together have seen over 2.16 lakh deletions, accounting for nearly 24 per cent of their combined electorate. These segments had around 9.07 lakh voters at the start of the SIR exercise.
