Opinion For many of us in Bengal, SIR means ‘delete first, explain later, if at all’

Now, deletion is a strong word. It suggests intent, deliberation, perhaps even a reason. My experience suggests something closer to disappearance. Because when I tried to understand why this had happened, I was met with a silence so complete it could qualify as policy. To be fair, before any of this happened, I was given a hearing or at least, called for a verification which I promptly attended as instructed, documents in hand, optimism intact, and I submitted everything that was asked of me: Identity proof, residence proof, my passport, names of my parents in the 2002 rolls, the full documentary autobiography of my civic existence.

What I did not receive, however, was the small courtesy of being heard or acknowledged. Or, in a particularly ambitious scenario, understood. There was no receipt for the documents I submitted on that day, and thereafter, no indication of what weighed for or against me. No reasoned order explaining why, after 15 years of uninterrupted voting, I had suddenly become electorally invisible. Just a quiet administrative vanishing act.

And here lies the larger problem: My experience, inconveniently, is not unique. Across West Bengal, names have been trimmed from electoral rolls with an efficiency that would be admirable if it were not so opaque. The SIR, which is meant to refine the rolls, appears in practice to be operating on a principle best described as “delete first, explain later, if at all.”

I have since filed an appeal. It sits somewhere in the digital ether, acknowledged but not yet alive. With elections approaching, the timeline has acquired a certain dark humour: The process to decide whether I can vote may well conclude after I no longer can.

Meanwhile, in the Supreme Court, Justice Bagchi, with admirable understatement, addressed the peculiarity in West Bengal of “logical discrepancies” leading to necessary adjudication by the judicial officers who have been hurriedly drawn from their courtrooms to tackle this arduous task. The Hon’ble Court emphasised the need for “impartial verification” of objections and reassured us that those who survive this process will find themselves in a “supplementary list”. As of this moment, it faintly feels like being in a waiting room for democracy.

We were told, helpfully, that the Court does not wish to “compress” the appeal hearings. They should be held “in full”. This is, of course, comforting. One always prefers a full hearing to a compressed one, especially when the election calendar is sprinting ahead with Olympic discipline.

The only small complication is that a perfectly uncompressed hearing, conducted at its natural pace, may conclude sometime after the votes have already been cast. Kapil Sibal did attempt to inject a note of urgency, seeking some form of interim relief for those who have been excluded despite being “mapped”, which, in present electoral terminology, appears to mean “we know you exist, we’re just not sure you should vote.” The Court, however, seemed disinclined to rush.

The Supreme Court, to its credit, is asking the right questions. But the answers, so far, remain procedural rather than practical. Yes, there will be verification. Yes, there will be appeals. Yes, everything will be done thoroughly. The only uncertainty is whether any of this will happen in time for the one event that gives the entire exercise meaning: The election itself.

Because let us be clear: The right to vote may be statutory in form, but its denial feels profoundly constitutional, especially when it happens like this, not with a bang, but with a missing name on a website, which you only come across when you bother to check. Civil society has raised concerns about exactly this, about the disproportionate impact on those who are already administratively fragile: Migrants, tenants, people whose lives do not fit neatly into forms and boxes. But even for someone like me, documented, consistent, and, until recently, reliably present on the rolls, the system has proved surprisingly capable of exclusion.

What is perhaps most striking is not the deletion itself, but the manner of it. No clear communication. No reasoning. No timeline that aligns with the urgency of an election. Just a process that moves forward, whether or not you are able to keep up. An electoral roll is not just a database. It is, in a very real sense, an invitation to participate, to choose, to matter. And when that invitation is withdrawn without explanation, the loss is not merely administrative; it feels personal.

I have travelled back to Kolkata from Delhi year after year to vote. I have stood in queues, in the heat and the humidity, participating in what we like to call the festival of democracy. It turns out the festival has a guest list. And this year, without warning, I am not on it.

One hopes the system will correct itself, that all the appeals will be heard by the tribunal in time, that reasons will be given, and that fairness will not remain an optional extra. But as things stand, the message is uncomfortably clear: You may have voted all your life, just don’t assume you always will.

The writer is a Supreme Court lawyer