ON February 28, West Bengal’s revised electoral roll was published after four bruising months of the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. Chief electoral officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal pegged the post-SIR electorate at 70.46 million, down 8.06 per cent from 76.64 million before the exercise began, after 6.18 million deletions (see The Great Purge). But the real headline was the asterisk: another 6 million electors were listed as ‘under adjudication’, their voting rights put on hold until judicial officers decide their fate.
