The non-stop noise about “vote chori” in West Bengal and allegations by the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress that the Election Commission is partisan and working to benefit the BJP cannot be written off as mere pre-poll political ranting by an embittered party. While the debate will continue as long as the BJP remains in power at the Centre and accusing fingers are pointed at the poll panel, something far more drastic took place in neighbouring Assam that was not debated as widely as it should have been.

Electoral roll changes and delimitation impact

For the record, final rolls published on February 10, 2026, confirmed 2.43 lakh deletions statewide in Assam after claims and objections, reducing the total number of electors to 2.49 crore—a 0.97 per cent drop from the draft—compared to the dreaded sword hanging over 51 lakh names on the verge of being disenfranchised in West Bengal. What Assam witnessed in the name of delimitation in 2023 has been alleged to be gerrymandering.

How constituency boundaries were altered

The Delimitation Commission did not go into the nitty-gritty of identifying and deleting the names of ineligible voters. Instead, it made drastic changes to constituency boundaries in such a manner that Muslim voters were concentrated in particular constituencies, thereby liberating adjoining constituencies from Muslim dominance. Muslim-heavy villages and polling booths were shifted into these pre-identified........

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