West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari interacts with a child during his visit to cast his vote for the high-stakes Nandigram Assembly by-election, in Purba Medinipur on October 6, 2026.
| Photo Credit: ANI
Kolkata
The West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office issued a statement on Tuesday (October 6, 2026) night and said that any eligible voter who has been deleted during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) can apply for their name to be restored through Form 6. The West Bengal CEO said that this list of deleted names is now available online for people to check.
Also read: Byelections 2026 highlights
“For left out eligible voter, the list of ASDD (Absentee, Shifted, Dead, Deleted) voters of SIR 2026 is available at the link ceowestbengal.wb.gov.in/asdsir and also at the respective links on the websites of the District Electoral Officers. Any person in this list, may submit Form 6 online or through BLO for inclusion of his/her name in the Electoral Roll,” the notice issued by the CEO, WB office said late on Tuesday (October 6, 2026) night.
According to the first draft roll published in December 2025, West Bengal had over 58 lakh ASDD voters. Around 24.16 lakh electors were identified as deceased, 32.65 lakh electors as shifted and absent, and 1.38 lakh electors were found to have duplicate enrolments in multiple places.
Amid the rising turmoil over the Election Commission of India and the rising pressure on the poll body for alleged wrongful deletions, the ECI recently said that it will undertake a special drive to restore the names left out during the SIR process. However, this did not initially include West Bengal.
When the final voter roll came out in West Bengal, over 27 lakh people were deleted after the adjudication process found them ineligible. However, after much political turmoil, the Supreme Court set up 19 appellate tribunals to recheck these 27 lakh cases. These 19 tribunals are headed by former judges of the Calcutta High Court.
However, no clarity has been offered on what will happen to the 27 lakh people who appealed to the tribunals to get their names restored. Whether they will also be eligible to fill up Form 6 to get reinstated in the voter rolls remained unclear.
“Why are high ranking former judges being asked to look at appeals? This is the job of the CEO and ERO according to Section 24 of the Representation of Peoples Act. These tribunals are a blunder and they are the reason why many may not be able to access Form 6 in West Bengal, because these people are stuck in between,” former CEO of West Bengal, Jawhar Sircar told The Hindu. He added that the notice published by the current CEO, WB is a clear admission of guilt that there were “wrongful” deletions during the Special Intensive Revision in West Bengal unlike what was claimed by the authorities initially.
Published – October 07, 2026 10:59 am IST
