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 fate subject to document verification.
If these names are eventually struck off, the net reduction in the constituency’s electorate could rise significantly, a development that has set off intense political speculation in the run-up to the 2026 polls. However, the number of fresh additions in the constituency is yet to be officially ascertained.The scale of deletions is politically significant in a constituency that has witnessed high-voltage contests in recent years.
In the 2021 assembly elections, senior TMC leader Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay had won the seat by over 28,000 votes. Months later, he vacated it to pave the way for Banerjee to contest the bypoll after her defeat in Nandigram. In that by-election, Banerjee emerged victorious with a margin of more than 58,000 votes, reasserting her grip over Bhabanipur.
The BJP, however, has repeatedly claimed that the constituency is winnable for the party in 2026.
Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari and former state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar have made frequent visits to the area in recent months, projecting it as a prestige battle in the next assembly polls.
Adhikari had on Friday challenged the chief minister to contest from Bhabanipur again, alleging that she was aware of the “nature of votes” that helped her win previously.
“I challenge you, contest from Bhabanipur. Don’t run away. The rest we will take care of,” he had said.
Reacting to the roll revision, Majumdar on Saturday said the deletions pertained to duplicate voters or those who had died.
“Even after publication of the list, there is scope to apply for inclusion. So far, around 47,000 names have been deleted. But whatever be the case, I don’t think Mamata Banerjee will have the courage to contest from Bhabanipur this time,” he said.
The TMC dismissed the BJP’s claims as political rhetoric. A senior party leader said that voters whose names were “wrongfully” deleted could still seek restoration.
“There is an opportunity to reapply. It would be incorrect to treat this as the final word. We all know the dirty game EC-BJP is playing, but it won’t yield any results,” he claimed.
The numbers, however, add a new layer of uncertainty to what has traditionally been a TMC stronghold. With the 2026 assembly elections expected in April, any sharp alteration in the voter base of a high-profile constituency like Bhabanipur is bound to feed political narratives of consolidation, churn, and recalibration of electoral arithmetic.
Whether the deletions materially alter the electoral balance remains to be seen. But in a seat where Banerjee has won three consecutive terms, and which the BJP now publicly targets as a battleground, the revised rolls have ensured that Bhabanipur will remain at the centre of Bengal’s intensifying pre-poll politics.
