Listen to this article:

A granular analysis of deleted voter rolls in three West Bengal constituencies suggests that what is being presented as routine revision may in fact be a far more selective exercise, driven through the opaque Under Adjudication (UA) category created for the process.

In election administration, mass deletions from voter rolls are usually explained in the dry language of procedure. Names are removed because a voter is dead, has shifted residence or cannot be traced. But in the Mothabari, Nakashipara and Habra Assembly constituencies of West Bengal, deletions that appear to cluster not randomly, but along politically and demographically significant lines points to a pattern that is difficult to dismiss as ordinary electoral maintenance.

Mothabari, in Malda, is a Muslim-dominated constituency in terms of population that has been in the news over unrest and has also witnessed a very high volume of deletions. Nakashipara  has a Muslim population of around 40%, and also recorded a strikingly high rate of deletion. Habra is a Hindu Scheduled Caste-dominated constituency where large-scale un-mapping appears to be the central issue.

Examined together, these three seats make it possible to test whether deletions have been confined to certain types of constituencies, or whether they cut across districts, demographics and local political contexts.

Fragmented roll, opaque process

For each constituency, the deleted lists for each polling station has to be downloaded 14 separate times to reconstruct the full constituency-wide picture. These files are image-based, not OCR or machine-readable, and were downloaded through a captcha-based process.

Since the data is fragmented, attempting scrutiny means having to manually gather and stitch together the evidence. Plus, these are large constituencies: Habra has 261 polling stations, Mothabari 205 and Nakashipara 262.

Once the fragmented data is reconstructed, the data reveals a stark divide between two categories of deletion. One is ASDD, shorthand for voters marked Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate. ASDD deletions are the standard method of electoral roll correction, resting on verifiable grounds and field-level confirmation.

The other is an opaquer category, “Under Adjudication”. Across all three constituencies, the granular analysis suggests that ASDD behaves as one would expect a normal clean-up process to behave. Under Adjudication does not.

To follow what is being said below, click on the two dashboards here and here, to check the data for yourself.

To follow what is being said below, click on the two dashboards here and here, to check the data for yourself.

If the deletions were the result of legitimate roll cleanup, both categories would be expected to produce similar broad demographic patterns. Instead, irregular contractions are seen, driven disproportionately through UA, a category whose effects vary sharply by local political context.

Mothabari: A roll contraction too large to ignore

The most dramatic case appears in Mothabari, where the voter roll is reported to have contracted by 21.77%, amounting to 46,274 deletions, in a constituency with a 60.15% Muslim population.

Of the total deletions, 9,907 came through standard ASD procedures and another 317 through Form 7. Only 1,657 voters, or 0.78% of the electorate, were marked as unmapped or lacking linkage with the 2002 electoral roll.

The remaining 37,255 were routed through the Under Adjudication category. That is, the opaque administrative mechanism of Under Adjudication overwhelmingly led to the deletions.

This is a problem because a contraction of more........

© The Wire