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Late evening (March 24), a fragile sense of security was shattered for seven crore electors in West Bengal. These were the ‘safe’ voters, citizens whose names had successfully made it to the final electoral roll published by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on February 28. Suddenly, they found themselves categorised under the status of ‘under adjudication’. In a state already reeling from the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), where nearly 40 lakh people (30 lakhs still under adjudication, approximate 10 lakhs deleted in the first supplementary list) remain in a state of suspended citizenship with no clarity on their electoral rights, it took mere minutes for statewide panic to set in. 

This was no minor clerical error. In the eyes of the public, it felt like a sudden disenfranchisement. Even high-profile figures like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Suvendu Adhikari and Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Abhishek Banerjee were not spared, appearing as ‘under adjudication’ in a system that seemed to have momentarily lost its mind.

While the state spiralled into panic, the ECI’s silence was telling. This is........

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