Bagda/Gaighata (North 24 Parganas): In Bengal’s Matua belt, the coming election is being haunted by a question more basic than who will win. Who will be allowed to vote at all?Across Bagda, Gaighata and other parts of the Bongaon Lok Sabha constituency, residents say their names have disappeared from the rolls or have been placed under adjudication, leaving thousands in uncertainty. In village after village, the complaints follow a pattern: names missing without explanation, women disproportionately affected, poor residents being asked to produce documents they no longer have, and those who have voted for years suddenly being asked to prove they belong.The anger has spilled into repeated protests outside the residence of Union minister and Matua Mahasangha leader Shantanu Thakur. From Gaighata, Chandpara, Bagda and nearby areas, aggrieved residents have been turning up at the BJP leader’s home demanding answers. The issue has become so politically sensitive that the BJP fielded Shantanu Thakur’s wife, Soma Thakur, as its candidate from Bagda.‘What can I do about the Election Commission’s rules?’The crisis is unfolding in a region where citizenship, caste and political allegiance have long been tightly bound together. Both Bagda and Gaighata are mostly rural, border constituencies with high Scheduled Caste populations, substantial Matua presence, and significant out-migration for work. In Gaighata, the SC population stands at 41.08%. In Bagda, it is even higher at 49.38%. Both constituencies sit along the international border, and both contain large numbers of poor working households whose lives are shaped by migration, insecure paperwork, and bureaucratic vulnerability. That background makes the present deletions politically explosive.Speaking to The Wire, Shantanu Thakur said, “It is true that this time, in the assembly election, a section of voters will not be able to vote. I hope that if they fill out the CAA form and submit their citizenship application, they will regain their voting rights. What can I do about the Election Commission’s rules?” Also read: Rs 800 for Citizenship: At Union Minister’s ‘Camp’, BJP is Monetising Matuas’ CAA ApplicationsThat statement has done little to reassure people on the ground. If anything, it has sharpened them. Many of those affected insist they are not recent arrivals, not undocumented outsiders, but long-settled residents whose families have voted for generations.Nowhere is the shock more visible than at Booth 173 in Chandpara under the Gaighata assembly segment. In one part of the booth, 183 out of 186 voters were placed “under adjudication”, leaving only three valid voters. Residents went to Shantanu Thakur’s house asking how such a thing was possible, but say they received no satisfactory answer.Debaprasad Bala of Booth 173 said, “My family has been voting for generations. Even then my name was removed. We are Matuas, and almost everyone in our locality has had their name struck off. We made a mistake by trusting Shantanu Thakur.” To follow what is being said below, click on the two dashboards here and here, to check the data for yourself.The larger numbers in Gaighata suggest this is no anomaly. The constituency’s electorate fell from 265,294 in the 2025 pre-draft roll to 222,245 eligible voters on April 9, 2026, a contraction of 43,049 voters, or 16.23% of the electorate. The shrinkage came in stages. 16,655 voters, or 6.28%, were removed at the draft stage, another 6,770 were removed through Form 7 objections, resulting in a 9.42% Form 7 deletion rate. Even more striking is the treatment of voters marked under adjudication. In Gaighata, 38,490 voters were flagged in this category, amounting to 14.51% of the total pre-draft electorate. Of the 22,278 processed, only 2,640 were found eligible. The remaining 19,638 were found ineligible and deleted. In other words, 88.15% of processed UA voters in Gaighata were struck off.On the ground, those numbers are visible in places like Dhakuria Para, where Booth 173 has 1,037 voters in total. Of the 186 under scrutiny, only one person has finally received clearance. At Booth 196 in Sekadi, Gaighata, 225 voters were placed under scrutiny and only six were eventually cleared. Local residents say almost all those affected are from the Matua community.Bagda presents an even harsher picture. Its electorate fell from 288,069 in the 2025 pre-draft roll to 238,390 eligible voters on 09.04.2026, a loss of 49,679 voters, or 17.25% of the constituency’s electorate. Of these, 24,922 voters, or 8.65%, were removed at the draft stage. But the most striking figure concerns Form 7 objections. 15,303 voters were removed this way, translating into a 15.29% deletion rate through Form 7 alone, the one of the highest in the state.At the far end of the Bagda area lies Mama-Bhagne Shaktigarh. Beyond it is Padmapukur village, and then the Jessore district of Bangladesh. It is precisely this borderland setting that gives the crisis its political edge. Nitai Biswas, a resident of Booth 80, said, “Even in the last Lok Sabha election, everyone in our area was with the BJP. Now that our names have been marked as under consideration, leaders are telling us to fill out the CAA form. But we did not come from Bangladesh, so why should we fill out a CAA form?” Bagda’s UA data also points to an aggressive filtering process. A total of 36,567 voters, or 12.69% of the electorate, were flagged as UA. Of the 13,459 cases processed, only 3,442 were found eligible, while 10,017 were found not eligible and deleted. That means 74.43% of processed UA voters in Bagda were removed.Those deleted are poor settlements of farmers, fisherfolk and casual workers, and to them, the cost of proving one’s eligibility can itself become a barrier.Deepali Sen, a local resident, said, “More women’s names have been removed. Now government officials are telling us to gather original documents and photocopies and go to Barasat. We barely earn enough through a day’s work. How are we supposed to pay for photocopies and travel to Barasat? No leader can answer that.” What emerges, then, is not only a story of deletion but of who gets deleted. Across 16 Matua and lower-caste Hindu refugee-dominated constituencies in North 24 Parganas and Nadia, the average draft deletion rate was 5.83%. Form 7 deletions averaged 8.60%. Overall contraction from pre-draft rolls to final eligible rolls averaged 12.42%, peaking above 17%. The worst-hit seats were concentrated in and around the Bangaon subdivision.‘BJP is actually the enemy of the Matuas and Dalits’North 24 Parganas was hit harder than Nadia. The average deletion rate in North 24 Parganas stood at 6.93%, compared with 5.17% in Nadia. The average Form 7 deletion rate was 10.33% in North 24 Parganas, against 7.56% in Nadia. Border constituencies, too, saw somewhat higher deletion rates than non-border constituencies.“I say with pride that there is not a single Muslim voter in my booth area. Everyone is poor Matua people and permanent residents here. Still, I do not know why so many names were removed. At first I heard that Rohingya names would be removed, but now I see that only Hindus’ names are being removed,” said local BJP leader Narayan Kha, who is a voter of PS 81 in Bagda. The Trinamool Congress, for its part, has sought to turn the issue into a political indictment of the BJP. TMC Rajya Sabha MP Mamata Bala Thakur, a member of the Thakur family, told The Wire, “It is now proven that the BJP is actually the enemy of the Matuas and Dalits. They are even afraid of women, which is why women’s names have been removed. By removing so many Matua names, they want to win through the back door.” Also read: In the SIR Era, Bengal’s Matua Heartland Confronts Collapse of CAA-era PromisesYet the political blame game offers little comfort in villages where fear is now hardening into rumour. Residents speak of growing anxiety that the present scrutiny could be followed by an NRC process and even detention camps. Whether grounded or not, those rumours gain force in an atmosphere where nobody seems able to explain why so many names have vanished.Shridam Dalpati, an elderly resident of the area, said, “Never before has there been such a problem since the day our names first appeared on the voter list. This time my name is there, but many women’s names have been deleted. These same women have voted all these years, so was that illegal then?” ‘This is entirely politics of snatching away rights’In many places, the absence of political outreach has itself become part of the story. Residents say no candidate has properly come to them, and regular campaign activity is almost invisible. Across the 16 Matua-heavy constituencies, 73.77% of under-adjudication voters were deleted on average. In Gaighata, that figure stood at 88.15%, and in Bagda at 74.43%. These are not marginal corrections at the edges of the rolls but point instead to a concentrated and highly consequential filtering process in precisely those constituencies where refugee-origin, lower-caste Hindu communities are most concentrated.The Left, now a diminished force in the region, has sought to position itself as a defender of voting rights in this climate. Former CPI(M) MP Alokesh Das said, “This is entirely the politics of snatching away rights. When the BJP is strategically removing names,For years, this area was treated as a distinct vote-bank, first courted by the TMC and then by the BJP. Now many residents openly ask what that support has delivered. Corruption no longer inspires loyalty in the TMC, and the BJP, even after electoral victories, has failed to produce meaningful change. This time, that accumulated disillusionment has fused with a crisis over the most basic democratic entitlement. Lastly, in Bagda alone, around 50,000 names are said to have been struck off the rolls, nearly two and a half times the BJP’s 2024 lead from the assembly segment.