Bengal's January of debates and discontents: A weekly round-up at Constitution First

In Adwaita Mallabarman's 1958 novel Titash Ekti Nadir Naam, the river's slow death mirrors the gradual erasure of the Malo fishing community that depends on it. The novel's power lies not in its dramatic catastrophe but in the quiet, inexorable process by which a people lose their moorings – their river, their livelihood, their very claim to exist in the place they've always called ‘home’.

This past week in Kolkata, as prominent politicians, lawyers and historians clashed at the Calcutta Debating Circle over whether "Hinduism needs protection from Hindutva," one couldn't help but recall Mallabarman's haunting metaphor. The unsettling moment arrived when BJP MLA Agnimitra Paul proudly noted that through the Bengal SIR, 58 lakh voters, most of them “illegal Bangladeshi Muslims,” had been rightfully deleted from Bengal's voter lists. To thunderous applause, she framed this mass disenfranchisement as “civilizational necessity”.

Could Paul have been speaking of Sanjay Mahato, a truck driver from Kolkata Port who found his name deleted because he was away on delivery when enumeration forms were distributed? Or, perhaps, of the Matuas, a community of Hindu refugees from Bangladesh who have lived in Bengal for decades, and now face existential dread? Many of them lack legacy data linking them to the 2002 voter list; some pushed to apply for citizenship under the CAA, effectively declaring themselves Bangladeshis first to prove they're Indian.

Was it possible Paul may have been referring to the Election Commission’s recent notice to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen claiming the age difference between him and his parents was “less than 15 years” — an algorithmic absurdity, which the ECI withdrew amid outrage? If a globally renowned economist with impeccable documentation can be summoned, what hope do marginalized communities have?

Under the proviso to Rule 21A(c) of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, no deletion can occur without prior notice and hearing. Yet over 58 lakh voters were preliminarily categorized as ‘Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate’, triggering mass hearings since December. Over 30 percent of voters in Muslim-majority districts like Murshidabad and Malda received hearing notices, compared to 10–13 percent in low-minority districts like Bankura and Purulia, despite comparable mapping success rates.

The Reporters' Collective has documented how the ECI's West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer sent instructions via WhatsApp with informal orders contradicting written regulations, advancing deadlines arbitrarily, deploying malfunctioning software that initially flagged 3.66 crore voters as "suspicious."

This pattern extends beyond Bengal. The Supreme Court hearings on the SIR have exposed this constitutional quicksand. Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi argued that Electoral Registration Officers can conduct limited citizenship inquiries for electoral roll inclusion, citing Sarbananda Sonowal v. Union of India (2005). But that judgment concerned deportation and national security. Importing its suspicion-driven logic into routine electoral administration threatens to cast, as the Bench has noted, a long "shadow" over citizenship before any formal determination.

At the Calcutta Debate, when Swapan Dasgupta proclaimed Hindutva will "overwhelm Bengal" in coming months, he was essentially making a political prediction rooted in the very mechanics of voter deletion, agency raids and demographic fear-mongering his colleagues were defending.

In our Independence Day Special Issue last year, our authors, through various themes, explored how the systemic manipulation of electoral groups through the mechanics of law and order, such as Special Intensive Revisions or demolitions, was truly unmaking adult suffrage in India. 

As Bengal moves toward elections, the applause that greeted Hindutva's champions in that Kolkata debate should worry us. Will Sanjay Mahato be able to vote? Will the Matuas of Thakurnagar see their names on the rolls? Will the Tagorean vision of an inclusive Bengal survive, or as Mallabarman depicted in Titash, suffer a quiet, inexorable erosion?

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