Over 47,000 names deleted in Mamata Banerjee's Bhabanipur seat after SIR

Ahead of the 2026 assembly elections in West Bengal, the publication of the post-SIR electoral rolls on Saturday triggered fresh political ripples in Bhabanipur, a constituency represented by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, with over 47,000 names struck off and more than 14,000 kept "under adjudication". South Kolkata's Bhabanipur assembly segment, widely regarded as Banerjee's pocket borough, had 2,06,295 voters when the SIR process began on November 4 last year. The draft roll, published on December 16 last year, showed deletion of 44,786 names. In the final list released on Saturday, another 2,324 names were removed, taking the total deletions to 47,094, a figure roughly 11,000 less than the over 58,000-vote margin secured by Banerjee in the 2021 Bhabanipur bypoll. This comparison is likely to add a sharper political edge to the constituency's pre-2026 electoral discourse. Apart from the deletions, 14,154 voters have been placed in the "under adjudication" category, with their