South, north Kolkata emerge twin flashpoints as SIR deletions hit Bengal's urban heartland

Kolkata, Dec 16 (PTI) Kolkata has emerged as one of the sharpest theatres of electoral churn under the Election Commission's SIR, with both the southern and northern parts of the city recording deletions of nearly a quarter or more of their voters, reshaping the city's political calculus ahead of the 2026 assembly polls.

The EC published the draft electoral rolls for West Bengal on Tuesday.

In south Kolkata, four politically high-profile assembly segments -- Bhabanipur, Kolkata Port, Ballygunge and Rashbehari -- together saw over 2.16 lakh names struck off, nearly 24 per cent of their combined electorate, according to the draft electoral rolls data.

When the SIR process began, these seats together had around 9.07 lakh voters.

The scale of deletions in these urban constituencies has added a sharp edge to the broader political debate around the SIR exercise, which has resulted in over 58 lakh deletions statewide.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Bhabanipur constituency alone accounted for 44,787 deletions from an electorate of 2,06,295 listed in January 2025, nearly 21.7 per cent.

The figure is almost four times the 10,599 deletions recorded in Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari's Nandigram seat in Purba Medinipur district, which had 2,78,212 voters before revision.

The contrast has not gone unnoticed politically.

In the 2021 assembly elections, Adhikari defeated Banerjee in Nandigram by 1,956 votes, prompting her return to the assembly through a bypoll in Bhabanipur, which she won later that year by a margin of 58,832 votes.

Kolkata Port, represented by senior minister and Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim, recorded 63,730 deletions, about 26.18 per cent, from an electorate of 2.43 lakh.

The constituency, with a sizeable Urdu-speaking Muslim population, is considered one of the Trinamool Congress's safest urban bastions, which Hakim won in 2021 by around 70,000 votes.

Ballygunge, held by minister Babul Supriyo, saw 65,171 deletions from an electorate of about 2.55 lakh, while Rashbehari, represented by Debashis Kumar, recorded 42,519 deletions from roughly 2.03 lakh voters.

Together, the four segments under the Kolkata South parliamentary constituency accounted for 2.16 lakh deletions, 23.83 per cent of their combined electorate.

The churn, however, extended beyond these seats.

Tollygunge, a politically significant constituency straddling south Kolkata and South 24 Parganas and associated with the Bengali film industry, logged 35,309 deletions, according to EC data.

The seat is held by minister Aroop Biswas, a four-time MLA who won in 2021 by about 50,000 votes and recently resigned as sports minister following controversy over the alleged mismanagement of an event linked to football legend Lionel Messi.

If south Kolkata reflected one face of urban churn, north Kolkata presented an even starker picture.

Seven north Kolkata assembly segments -- Chowringhee, Entally, Beleghata, Jorasanko, Shyampukur, Maniktola and Kashipur-Belgachhia -- together had around 15 lakh electors when the SIR process began and witnessed deletions of about 3.9 lakh names, or nearly 25.85 per cent.

Among all 294 assembly constituencies in the state, the highest number of deletions was recorded in Chowringhee, represented by TMC MLA Nayana Bandyopadhyay, wife of veteran party MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay, where 74,553 names were struck off, around 35.45 per cent of its electorate of 2.10 lakh.

A three-time MLA, Bandyopadhyay had won the seat in 2021 by a margin of over 44,000 votes.

In Shyampukur, represented by senior minister Shashi Panja, 42,303 deletions were recorded. Panja, a three-time MLA and a prominent face of the party on national television channels, had won the seat in 2021 by around 22,500 votes.

Jorasanko, a Hindi-speaking population-dominated constituency in central Kolkata, represented by Vivek Gupta, editor of Hindi daily Sanmarg and a former TMC Rajya Sabha MP, saw one of the sharpest trims. Of its 1.98 lakh voters when the SIR began, around 72,900 names were deleted, or roughly 36.66 per cent -- the second highest in the state after Chowringhee. Gupta had won the seat in 2021 by about 13,000 votes.

The deletions have revived focus on Kolkata's contrasting urban sociologies.

While south Kolkata, from Ballygunge to Tollygunge, is often associated with a more globalised, aspirational electorate shaped by post-liberalisation influences, north Kolkata remains rooted in older working-class, trading and migrant neighbourhoods, making the scale of churn across both belts politically sensitive.

The SIR exercise has witnessed shrinking of West Bengal's electorate from 7.66 crore to 7.08 crore.

The revision, conducted between November 4 and December 11, cited grounds including death, permanent migration, duplication and non-submission of enumeration forms.

Election Commission officials have stressed that the draft rolls are provisional and a hearings and claims-and-objections process will follow.

Yet, with the TMC having swept all of the city's eleven seats and Tollygunge in the 2021 polls, the depth and geography of deletions in both south and north Kolkata have ensured that the SIR remains firmly at the centre of an intensifying political contest. PTI PNT NN