Kolkata: More than 12,000 in Rejinagar and over 6,000 in Nandigram: these are not victory margins of winning candidates in the 2026 assembly polls but the number of SIR appeals pending before tribunals from the two seats before the Oct 6 bypolls, the first since this summer’s election brought BJP to office.Only 93 appeals — 89 in Nandigram and 4 in Rejinagar — have been disposed of by the tribunals in the past few months. All decisions have gone in favour of the appellants.As in the April election, the spectre of deleted voters looms over the political discourse in both seats. Besides, recent revelations that the two Election Commissioners were allegedly kept in the dark about many decisions of the Election Commission have infused a fresh vigour into the campaign.“A majority of the deleted voters are from minority-dominated areas. I have met people whose parents and children are on the electoral roll but their names have been struck off. There are brothers, one of whom can vote but the other can’t. People are asking us why this happened, but we have no explanation,” said Santigopal Giri, Left Front’s candidate from Nandigram.Prasenjit Bose, chairperson of the SIR committee of Bengal Congress, said, “That 93% of SIR appellants have made it to the electoral roll goes to show that those who were excluded were genuine electors.”Bengal BJP spokesperson Debjit Sarkar claimed it was “collateral damage” that “some genuine electors would not be able to vote”. He added, “The Supreme Court is monitoring the appeals process. The Election Commission has filed an affidavit. We should not be commenting.”Chief minister Suvendu Adhikari had won the Nandigram seat by 9,665 votes in May but chose to give up the seat and retain Bhabanipur, where he defeated former CM Mamata Banerjee. For the bypoll, BJP has fielded Hasirani Rath, mother of Adhikari’s former personal assistant Chandranath Rath, who was shot two days after BJP’s landslide victory.The Rejinagar seat in Murshidabad fell vacant after Aam Janata Unnayan Party leader Humayun Kabir retained Nawda, also in Murshidabad, after winning both seats in May. BJP has fielded Sankharav Sarkar, a former district president, to take on Mamata Trinamool’s Rabiul Alam Chowdhury and Left’s Saeed Asad Ali.With a far larger number of pending appeals, the issue of deleted voters is a recurrent theme in election speeches in Rejinagar. . “People are still talking about how so many voters were struck off the rolls,” said Mamata Trinamool’ Chowdhury, adding that SIR, non-disbursement of Annapurna Yojana and price rise were the major poll issues.
