KOLKATA: Matuas in several districts of West Bengal fear losing of citizenship of India hours before the Election Commission of India (ECI) officially publishes the post-Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state by Saturday afternoon.
A huge number of the Matuas residing in North 24 Parganas, Nadia, East Bardhaman and Jalpaiguri districts in the state feared that their names are likely to be deleted from the post-SIR final list.
Many voters belonging to the Matua community in Bongaon Lok Sabha (LS) constituency of North 24 Parganas, who voted Santanu Thakur, local BJP MP and Union Minister of State for Shipping, in the last LS polls in 2024 to win the battle against the Trinamool Congress on Friday met Mamatabala Thakur, Rajya Sabha MP of the ruling party in the state, and expressed fear to lose citizenship if their names are removed from the final electoral rolls.
Sources in the office of the District Electoral Officer (DEO) of North 24 Parganas district said that around two lakh voters belonging to logical discrepancies and unmapped categories respectively were summoned by the ECI for SIR hearings. Around 1.25 lakh out of the two lakh voters are Matuas. Around 65,000 voters had appeared at the SIR hearing centres in the Bongaon LS constituency area.
Sources felt that the names of a huge number of Matua voters in about four to five assembly constituencies under the Bongaon LS seat may be deleted.
The national poll panel will publish the final electoral rolls of Bengal this afternoon, ending a three-month-long anxiety-ridden SIR process marked by political mudslinging, street protests and legal battle.
The final rolls will include 7.08 crore voters who had made it to the pre-SIR hearings draft rolls released on December 16. They will be classified as “deleted”, “under adjudication” or “approved” in the final list, sources said.
As part of the cleansing process, more than 58 lakh absent, dead, shifted and duplicate voters who were in the 2025 list of 7.66 crore voters have already been deleted from the draft rolls.
The final rolls will be available on voters.eci.gov.in, ceowestbengal.wb.gov.in and the ECINET app. Voters can check their status on the two websites and app by keying in their EPIC numbers and names.
Those who want to check their status offline can visit the offices of block development officers (BDOs), sub-divisional officers (SDOs) and district election officers (DEOs), where hard copies of the rolls will be available.
The “deleted” category of the final list will contain names of voters who either did not attend hearings or failed to submit documents specified by the ECI. The names were deleted after the election commissioner, electoral registration officers (EROs) and AEROs agreed that they did not meet the required criteria.
A total of 1.51 crore voters were called for hearings after the draft rolls were published. Of them, 32 lakh belong to the ‘unmapped’ group because they could not link themselves to the 2002 SIR rolls through self or progeny mapping. Another 1.19 crore voters received hearing notices over discrepancies in their enumeration forms submitted before the SIR hearing started.
The “under adjudication” category will include voters who the EC, EROs or AEROs were not sure should be included. Following the Supreme Court’s intervention, judicial officers were tasked with deciding their fate. Nearly 60 lakh voters will be listed in this group.
The “approved” category will have voters who made it to the final rolls. A total of 5.57 crore voters, who were not called for hearings after the publication of the draft rolls, will find place on the final list. The figure will go up depending on how many of the 1.51 crore voters were cleared for inclusion.
Political parties will be given soft copies of the final rolls.