In India, the world’s largest democracy, a single misspelling made years ago can now jeopardize a person’s right to vote.
Mohammad Ali Halder, a 63-year-old textile manufacturer in West Bengal, found out after receiving a worrying notice earlier this year, just months before elections to select the state’s next government. The Election Commission of India informed him that his father’s name was written differently in two sets of voter records, making it difficult to verify Mr. Halder’s identity. He will not be able to vote until the matter is resolved.
Mr Halder, who runs his own textile business in the capital Kolkata, gathered documents to prove his citizenship – nearly 100-year-old land records, his passport and other government-issued identity cards – and filed an appeal. But his name has not been restored and voting has started.
“I feel like a living corpse,” Mr. Halder said, holding a plastic bag filled with documents.
Mr Halder is one of nearly nine million voters, or more than 10 per cent of voters in West Bengal, whose names have been deleted or entered as “doubtful” in the recent electoral roll revision by the Election Commission of India. It is the most populous state among India’s four states and one union territory where voters will go to the polls this month, with results expected on May 4.
Many of those removed were Muslims, and opposition parties have accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of abusing its power to disenfranchise Muslim voters. Mr Modi heads the three-member committee that selects the head of the commission.
Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has long described Muslims as invaders who compromise its idea of a Hindu nation. By removing Muslim names from the voter list, the party could boost its chances in the state, which has India’s second-largest Muslim population, and where it has never won.
The issue has become a plank in the fight between grassroots party Trinamool Congress, whose leader Mamata Banerjee, 71, is contesting for her fourth term, and the BJP led by former Trinamool member Suvendu Adhikari in West Bengal.
Ms Banerjee, who has been chief minister of West Bengal since 2011, is one of Mr Modi’s staunchest critics and implacable enemies. Her image of being both approachable and protective has earned her the nickname “Didi”, or elder sister.
Both the BJP and the Election Commission have refuted claims of voter list manipulation through their “special intensive vetting”, which began in a dozen states and territories last year. The commission said it is necessary to remove names of voters who have died, are duplicate or have left the state. The last time such an exercise took place was in 2002.
The stakes are especially high in West Bengal as the BJP continues to make gains. From winning only three seats in the Legislative Assembly in 2016 out of 294 seats in the last election, it was reduced to 77 seats in 2021. While many election analysts still expect Ms Banerjee to win, they predict a smaller margin, and Mr Modi’s party could win more than 100 seats.
West Bengal is strategically important as the Siliguri Corridor, which shares borders with three countries and has China looming behind it, passes through the state. Sometimes called “chicken neck” because it is about 13 miles wide at its narrowest, it is India’s only land route to its eight northeastern states, used to deliver civilian and military supplies to sensitive border areas.
The growing presence of the BJP symbolizes the progress that Mr Modi and the Hindu right have made in their quest to dominate India. He says that India can be economically powerful only if it puts Hindus first at both the national and state levels, a sentiment that appeals to many Bengalis. Hindus form the majority in India’s population and Muslims constitute about 15 percent.
Muslim voters remain loyal to Ms Banerjee, an avowed secularist who is unattractive in appearance but fierce in her messaging against opponents. She also attracts many Hindu voters for whom Bengali cultural identity transcends religion. Bengalis are proud of their rich intellectual heritage, having produced several Nobel laureates, including Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote the Indian national anthem.
“For us, he is a candidate for all 294 seats,” said businessman Arindam Dattaroy, who recently joined Trinamool candidate Debashish Kumar’s door-to-door campaign on Sunday morning. Mr. Dattaroy said that Ms. Banerjee has led Bengal on the path of progress. “She’s a street fighter, she speaks for the common people.”
Many voters told us they fear that the BJP state government will erase Bengali identity and language. He expressed concern that the BJP would try to impose Hindi speaking or vegetarianism in a region known for its love of fish and meat. (To allay such apprehensions, a BJP candidate recently campaigned in Kolkata with a fish in his hand.)
Activists of Ms Banerjee’s party distributed “Didi vs Modi” snakes-ladder boards with cutouts that could be shaped like dice. The biggest threat on board was a two-headed snake bearing the faces of Mr Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. Get down at that intersection and the whole state will slide down, a party worker explained cheerfully.
But Ms Banerjee’s rule has been uneven. While welfare programs delivering cash to women have been popular, his government has been plagued by corruption allegations. In one scandal, party officials were accused of selling teaching positions in government schools. Some voters said they were disappointed by the slow pace of job creation and worried about women’s safety in 2024 following the rape and murder of a female doctor.
The BJP has promised to double cash assistance to women and made public safety a campaign issue: Ratna Debnath, a doctor’s mother who decided to contest the election for the BJP, said not all criminals were brought to justice under Ms Banerjee.
The BJP’s emerging stronghold is in north Bengal, a hilly border region where about a fifth of the state’s population of 100 million lives. The party holds 30 out of 54 assembly seats in eight districts of the region. The voters here care less about religion and language. They want higher-paying jobs and better roads, and many accuse the Banerjee government of ignoring their interests.
Reshma Mukhiya, who runs a small tea stall in Kurseong, a town en route to Darjeeling, pointed to a potholed road, which she said had not been repaired for several months.
“In the last election, we supported Didi,” said Ms. Mukhiya, 40, who earns 20,000 rupees, or $214, a month from her shop, including the 1,500 rupees she gets from a women’s welfare program. But Trinamool does “very little work”, he said. “Something must change now.”
In these disaffected border areas, the BJP’s promise to drive out “infiltrators” competing for jobs has resonated. Home Minister Mr Shah has used the term to describe illegal immigrants from neighboring, Muslim-majority Bangladesh – a long-standing issue in India, although their numbers are hard to formally estimate.
Critics of the voter list revision said that it targets Muslim citizens of India by confusing the issues. Kolkata Municipal Corporation councilor and Trinamool member Farida Parveen said the reasons given by the authorities for removing the names are confusing to people with limited resources and time to prove their identity. Muslims were deported at a higher rate than Hindus.
Thousands of names were put into the “decision”, Ms Parveen said, ranging from a voter’s father being listed as female in 2002, or families with four children now having six children.
When 27-year-old homeopathic doctor SK Mohammed Aamir filled his voter registration form earlier this year, he provided his father’s details, but he received a notice from the commission on April 6, leaving him scratching his head. It said the details linking him to the previous amendment were those of his grandparents and there was a discrepancy in age. “This means I have lost my right to vote for the time being.”
Mr Halder, a textile manufacturer in Kolkata, was told his name and details were “incorrectly linked” because the spelling of his father’s name, “Riyas”, in the 2002 amendment did not match the name, “Riyasuddin Halder”, which he had written in his application this year.
Sitting cross-legged on a bed in his family home in South 24 Parganas, a Muslim-majority district of Kolkata where most voters’ names have been removed, Mr Halder showed land records dating back to 1928. He said he was hoping to appeal the decision through a special tribunal, except that no tribunal has yet been set up in his neighborhood.
They worried that without their voter registration the bank could close their account, or the government could close their business.
“I’m afraid I’ll lose my citizenship,” he said.
Chandrashekhar Bhattacharya contributed reporting.
