Listen to this article:

Kolkata: At the stroke of midnight on April 6, the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) publication of the 12th and final supplementary voter list brought the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process in West Bengal to a hard bureaucratic close.

The rolls now stand frozen for the assembly election scheduled later this month, ending the revision exercise with nearly 89 lakh fewer voters on the list than when the revision process began.

The ECI’s final published district-wise list of voters kept under adjudication is significant not because it settles the controversy, but because it lays bare the brutal math behind this historic shrinkage. For the first time, the public can see the district-level numbers showing how many were reinstated after the judicial review, and how many were summarily purged.

window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i )if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t] "px";r.style.height=d}}}); The adjudication numbers alone are enormous: over 60 lakh voters were examined, of whom roughly 32.68 lakh were found eligible, while 27.16 lakh were declared ineligible. Set against the broader pre-revision numbers, the total electorate has been slashed by 11.61%. As the state heads to the polls, an analysis of the final published list reveals a troubling picture of systemic, administrative disenfranchisement.

Here are five analytical takeaways from the data.

1. The scale of exclusion 

The final figures show that this was not a minor correction of outdated entries or a standard roll purification. More than 60 lakh voters were pushed through a rapid adjudication process, resulting in the direct disqualification of over 27 lakh citizens. The overall roll contracted by nearly 89 lakh names between the pre-SIR stage and the midnight freeze.

That alone makes this one of the most consequential and severe, electoral filtering exercises in recent memory. The concern is not merely the size of the operation, but the timing of the transparency as well. District-level numbers have come into public view only after the........

© The Wire