Panic, anger ripple across Matua belt as SIR deletions reopen citizenship faultlines before WB polls

KOLKATA: (Mar 2) Panic, anger and suspicion are rippling through West Bengal’s Matua heartland, pushing the BJP into a defensive mode in its bastion even as the TMC senses a political opening, after large-scale deletions under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

The Election Commission’s first intensive revision since 2002 has reopened old wounds in the border districts. For the Matuas, a Scheduled Caste Hindu refugee community with decisive influence in over 50 assembly seats across North 24 Parganas and Nadia districts in south Bengal and parts of north Bengal, the exercise has revived anxieties over identity, documentation and belonging.

Under the SIR framework, voters whose names did not feature in the 2002 rolls were required to furnish eligibility documents. For lakhs who emigrated from Bangladesh over decades, often without formal paperwork, that scrutiny has now translated into deletions, leaving many confronting disenfranchisement.

Source: PTI News

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