More than a crore – or 10 million – voters in the east Indian state of West Bengal (WB) recently found their voting rights suspended as the Election Commission of India (ECI) undertook a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the state’s voter rolls in the lead up to the upcoming assembly election on 23-29 April 2026.According to the WB government’s submission to the Supreme Court on 9 February, some three weeks before the ECI released the final list, 32 lakh (3.2 million) voters were ‘unmapped’ and 1.36 crore (13.6 million) were put in a category called ‘Logical Discrepancy (LD)’.While ‘unmapped’ refers to individuals who never applied for inclusion into the voter rolls, those under LD were de-registered pending adjudication due to some documentary mismatch or errors in their application (which could include minor spelling mistakes).Needless to say, the whole process has triggered massive anxiety, panic and fear among voters across the state. Muslim voters are especially concerned, even as opposition parties accuse the ECI of doing the Narendra Modi government’s bidding.According to published data, “nine of 10 districts with the highest number of voters under adjudication have a Muslim voter population of 50% or more.” A detailed AltNews analysis of SIR data from two constituencies – Bhabanipur and Ballygunge – reveals similar lopsided patterns.All of this is an uncanny reminder of what has transpired in neighbouring Assam over the last three decades in the name of identifying ‘illegal foreigners’. The whole SIR process, in fact, bears the signature hallmarks of Assam’s hydra-headed citizenship disenfranchisement regime.While the latter predates the BJP and is rooted in the politics of Assamese nationalism (rather than Hindutva), the two regimes share a common goal of disenfranchising minorities to consolidate the majority demographic. In fact, with the coming of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Assam in 2016, the two processes have moved closer to one another.State of limboIn Assam, three distinct yet interrelated bureaucratic mechanisms have been mechanically stripping individuals of their franchise and citizenship since the 1960s: Doubtful-Voter (D-Voter) system, Foreigners Tribunals (FT) and National Register of Citizens (NRC).Among them, the D-Voter system is closest to the SIR process. Introduced in 1997, it is designed to remove suspected ‘illegal immigrants’ from voter rolls by putting a ‘D’ before their names. D-Voters can then be referred to one of Assam’s hundred Foreigners Tribunals (FT) for a final decision on not just their voting rights, but also Indian citizenship.In its first year of introduction, the D-Voter system disenfranchised some 3.7 lakh people in the state. Subsequently, while many went missing, others returned to voter rolls after trials. Yet others fell through the cracks in the system into total citizenship loss.In 2024, Assam’s BJP chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, revealed that the state had 96,987 D-Voters and 26,144 had received FT notices. Among the latter, 11,819 cases were pending (meaning, they are still under-trials at FTs).In practice, no specific or consistent norm was followed in marking voters as ‘D’. The process was undertaken arbitrarily and opaquely, not unlike in WB today. In fact, many didn’t even realise they were D-Voters until they received an FT notice years later (some receiving them 21 years later!). They didn’t even get a chance to appeal their disenfranchisement, a process that is now available (although imperfectly) in WB due to the apex court’s intervention.In a microscopic sense, D-Voters in Assam are similar to those put under the ‘Logical Discrepancy (LD)’ category in WB under the ongoing SIR process. But, more broadly, all individuals removed from voter rolls in WB are effectively pushed into the same existential limbo as D-Voters in Assam. They are neither non-citizens, nor full citizens.This state of limbo or half-citizenship came back to haunt many of the D-Voters in Assam when they found themselves inside an FT chamber or when they applied for inclusion in the state’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) published in 2019.They found themselves trapped in an unending cycle of suspicion and anxiety.First, they had a hard time proving to an FT bench that they were genuine Indian citizens (it doesn’t matter if they were marked ‘D’ without any reason).Then, they became doubly vulnerable to being dropped from the final NRC list. Once missing from this list, an individual would stand on weaker ground if and when they are dragged to an FT for a citizenship trial. They would, in essence, move one step closer to entering a zone of statelessness and being detained for years without trial.Figure: Angshuman ChoudhuryMore recently, D-Voters in Assam found themselves carried forward with the same doubtful label when the ECI conducted a ‘Special Revision (SR)’ of voter rolls in Assam (the SR is a slightly modified, Assam-specific version of the SIR). Interestingly, the state’s BJP Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, revealed in February that “lakhs” of D-Voters were deleted from the voter rolls based on complaints by his party’s cadres.This means in Assam, the SR process was in some manner linearly linked to the D-Voter process. Last October, the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, also revealed the ECI yielded part of the voter revision process in Assam to the state’s NRC exercise.This is worrying because neither the D-Voter list, nor the 2019 NRC list are final. They are both open to appeals and amendments, and basing a fresh voter roll revision exercise on them would be deeply flawed, arbitrary and unjust.A warning for West Bengal?This interlinked chain of disenfranchisement could, in theory, also ensnare those suspended or removed from voter rolls in WB if the Centre decides to expand the FT mechanism, NRC exercise and detention regime to the state in the future.This isn’t entirely implausible, as the newly-minted Immigration and Foreigners Order, 2025 (rules 16-20) allows the central government to constitute FTs in any state or Union Territory to dispose off foreigner-related cases.In fact, the special Appellate Tribunals (AT) that the Supreme Court has asked the ECI to set up to adjudicate SIR-related objections in WB appear to be similar to the FTs.Just like the FTs, the ATs are quasi-judicial bodies manned by members who lack adequate training in franchise issues (as also pointed out by the WB government’s counsel in court).FTs, of course, have broader powers. But, the current ATs could create an executive gateway to or rationale for Assam-like FTs in WB. After all, electoral disenfranchisement is often the first step towards total citizenship deprivation.This would, however, be difficult to achieve without the cooperation of the state government.Minor errors, major consequencesMedia reports indicate that the ECI suspended individuals from voter rolls in WB based on minor spelling or transliteration errors. As the AltNews investigation reveals:Variations in transliteration, for example, “Mohammed” versus “Muhammad,” “Mondal” versus “Mandal”, routinely confused the ERONET software.Spellings of Hindu surnames, like ‘Ganguly’ and ‘Dutta’, also triggered removals, according to one media report.This is peak Assam redux. Many have found themselves stripped off their citizenship because of minor spelling or transliteration mismatches in either their own names, or the names of their immediate relatives. It is also likely that such discrepancies triggered D-Voter removals, although the opacity of the process makes it difficult to know with certainty.Take the case of 50-year old Dulubi Bibi. An FT in Silchar declared her a foreigner in 2017 on the basis of different iterations of her name appearing in different documents – Dulubi Bibi, Dulabjan Begum and Dulubi Bibi. Six years later, the same FT reversed the order and declared her an Indian citizen.Such discrepancies may arise out of interchangeable surnames that many Muslim communities commonly use or due to the state incorrectly recording their names. For example, although Tajab Ali’s name was wrongly recorded as ‘Tajap Ali’ in previous voter lists, an FT flagged him down as a foreigner due to the mismatch.One Sajida Bibi was de-nationalised simply because her name is recorded as ‘Sabahan Bibi’ in the 1951 Assam NRC. An FT refused to entertain Manowara Bewa’s village panchayat document proving her legacy in Assam because of two versions of her husband’s name – Sopiyal Hoque and Sapiyar Rahman.As a recent report on FTs by NLSIU and Queen Mary University of London notes:Names, transliterated across languages and dialects, often vary in spelling. For instance, Faizur Rahman might appear as Fazal Rahman or Faizur Rihman depending on pronunciation, dialect, or enumerator error—particularly where no cross-checking occurs.Negative orders by FTs based on these minor spelling errors had become so rampant in Assam that even the Supreme Court sat up and took notice in 2024 in the case of one Rahim Ali. It noted how “variation in name spelling is not a foreign phenomenon in preparation of the Electoral Roll.”Highlighting the unique sociocultural context of India, the division bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sudhanshu Dhulia said:It is not uncommon throughout India that different spellings may be written in the regional/vernacular language and in English. Such/same person will have a differently spelt name in English and the local language. This is more pronounced where due to specific pronunciation habits or styles there can be different spellings for the same name in different languages viz. English/Hindi/Urdu/Assamese/Bangla etc.While the court’s observation was much-needed, the case reveals the tragic consequences of disenfranchising people on the basis of minor spelling errors. Even as the apex court reversed an earlier FT order and High Court judgement declaring him a ‘foreigner’, Ali had already passed away two and a half years earlier – perennially stressed and physically truncated by the citizenship ordeal that began in 2004.With the SIR in West Bengal, we are once again witnessing a repeat of these cruel bureaucratic pathologies, which have torn apart families and even forced individuals to take their own lives in Assam. What is perhaps more worrying is that the top court appears to be largely unconcerned, as it treats serious lapses with grave human consequences as minor foibles in the wider system.Franchise is a central pillar of any democracy. It is a building block of citizenship and legal personhood. It is incumbent, therefore, on India’s highest judicial institutions to defend it against the strongest of political headwinds.This post first appeared on the author’s Substack Barbed Wires and has been republished with permission.