Kolkata: An application seeking a name’s deletion from the West Bengal’s electoral rolls was more than twice as likely to have reached an outcome as one seeking inclusion, according to constituency-level data submitted by the Election Commission of India to the Supreme Court.The disparity became wider at the point of decision. Among applications with a recorded outcome, 97.54% of Form 7 requests seeking exclusion were accepted or had resulted in the electoral roll being updated. The corresponding rate for Form 6 applications seeking inclusion was 49.83%.The figures are contained in Annexures R/1 and R/2 of the ECI’s counter-affidavit in a case filed by public-interest petitioner and Congress leader Prasenjit Bose. They cover claims and objections received in West Bengal between December 17, 2025 and August 7, 2026.A citizen files Form 6 to be added to the list. Form 7 is filed to have a name deleted, either by the elector themselves or by a third-party objecting to their presence.During the specified period, the Election Commission received 34,13,481 Form 6 applications. Of those, the roll was successfully updated for 7,07,606 citizens, with another 14,079 marked as accepted. A massive 7,26,660 were rejected outright.This means only 20.73% of all Form 6 applications had actually resulted in a name being added to the roll.The Commission received 6,39,049 Form 7 applications. Of these, 5,72,330 had resulted in the electoral roll being updated, while only 14,506 were rejected. Thus, 5,86,836 Form 7 applications, or 91.83%, had reached a completed outcome. Of those, 97.53% resulted in exclusion. The requested deletion had already been carried into the electoral roll in 89.56% of all Form 7 cases.In other words, a Form 7 application was 2.19 times as likely as a Form 6 application to have reached a completed outcome. Looking at all applications received, a Form 7 request was 4.32 times as likely to have produced the requested change in the electoral roll.The number of Form 7 applications was only 18.7% of the number of Form 6 applications. Yet completed Form 7 deletions amounted to nearly 81% of all completed Form 6 additions.Twenty-eight additions from 28,701 claimsThe statewide percentages conceal constituencies where almost no inclusion claim produced an addition.Also read: In Bengal, 16 Lakh Voters Were Purged in Secret. Two Election Commissioners Didn’t Know Why or HowChopra in Uttar Dinajpur received 28,701 Form 6 claims. Twenty-eight resulted in a name being added, a rate of 0.1%. Another 1,570 were rejected and 3,600 listed as unprocessed. In the same constituency the roll was updated in 948 of 954 Form 7 cases, and not one objection was refused.Kaliaganj, also in Uttar Dinajpur, received 14,477 claims and added 24 names, with 5,191 left unprocessed. Basanti in South 24 Parganas received 12,195 and added 54. Swarupnagar received 12,106 and added 71. Madhyamgram received 17,717 and added 115. Noapara received 17,403 and added 187, with 9,249 unprocessed. Islampur received 16,767 and added 439.The contrast with Form 7 is hard to miss.Dabgram-Fulbari in Jalpaiguri recorded 16,514 roll updates from 16,559 objections, 99.7%, and 10 refusals. Against that, 1,056 of its 31,976 inclusion claims produced an addition, 3.3%. One constituency took more than 16,500 names off and added 1,000.Bagda in North 24 Parganas recorded 15,307 deletions from 15,561 applications, 98.4%, with three refused, and added 4,826 from 29,831 claims. Dabgram-Fulbari and Bagda are the two largest single blocks of completed deletions in the state. The third is Sonarpur Uttar in South 24 Parganas, with 9,354.Rajganj in Jalpaiguri added 143 names from 18,528 claims, 0.8%, while 3,866 of its 3,891 objections produced a deletion. One application was refused. Dabgram-Fulbari and Rajganj show the same shape inside one district.Decided cases tell the same storyA low update rate could reflect applications still pending. Restricting the comparison to cases actually decided does not remove the disparity.In Chopra, 28 claims were allowed and 1,570 refused. Of the claims decided either way, 1.75% favoured inclusion.In Kalyani, 6,097 claims were refused and 585 names added, a rate among decided cases of 8.75%. Its Form 7 record runs the other way – 9,063 deletions effected, 21 objections refused, 99.77% allowed.In Nakashipara, 9,339 refusals against 934 additions, the latter at 9.09%. Form 7 produced 3,214 deletions against eight refusals.In Matigara-Naxalbari, 2,264 additions against 9,754 refusals, bring the inclusions at 18.84%. Form 7 produced 8,491 deletions against 55 refusals, with deletions at 99.36%.The youngest electors depend on the weakest routeA first-time elector can reach the roll only through Form 6. It is the sole route for anyone who has never been registered, and the Commission’s own age data shows how badly that route is serving them.Also read: Gen Zs Not Being Included in Voter List Since 2024 Despite Two Election Commissioners Asking for It: ReportFormat 3B of the same affidavit records West Bengal’s projected population for 2026 at 10.40 crore, of whom 7.59 crore are 18 or over, against a final roll of 6.45 crore. That is 84.9 percent of the adult population registered.Of the 22,26,101 people projected to be aged 18 or 19, just 5,23,229 are on the roll. This is 23.5%.Every other cohort is far higher. Those aged 20 to 29 are at 70.3%, 30 to 39 at 92.7%, 50 to 59 at 99.9%. The 60 to 69 and 70 to 79 cohorts show 104.5% and 109.1%, meaning the roll carries more electors in those ages than the projection says exist.Three in four of Bengal’s 18- and 19-year-olds are therefore absent from the register, and the only way in for them is the route that rejected 7,26,660 applications, left 4,86,395 unprocessed, and allowed fewer than half of the claims it decided.The district divideUttar Dinajpur added names in 8.16% of the claims it received and removed names in 96.11% of the objections. Jalpaiguri added 8.21% and removed 98.59%. Murshidabad added 10.58% and removed 87.71%.At the other end, Jhargram added names in 52.16% of its claims, Kolkata South in 42.91% and Purbo Medinipur in 42.20%. Even there the deletion rate was higher, at 62.52%, 85.91% and 66.70%.Not one of the 24 districts added names at a higher rate than it removed them.The gap was widest along the borderIn the 43 constituencies classified as border seats, only 30.62% of inclusion claims had been decided, and 34.70% of those were allowed. Of the objections, 95.37% had been decided and 99.67% of those were allowed. The distance between the two is nearly 65 percentage points.Measured against the pre-SIR electorate, border constituencies recorded 6.28 completed additions and 10.57 completed deletions for every thousand electors.In non-border constituencies there were 9.76 additions against 6.92 deletions per thousand. The imbalance in allowance rates persists even there, 96.96% against 51.83.Constituencies with large Scheduled Caste populations show the same shapeIn the 31 constituencies where the Scheduled Caste share is at least 40%, 31.19% of inclusion claims had been decided and 36.82% of those were allowed. For objections, the figures are 95.52% and 99.67%.Those constituencies recorded 6.12 completed additions and 13.76 completed deletions for every thousand electors. They are the only caste band where deletions run at more than twice that of additions.The gradient is consistent across the four bands. Completed additions fall from 12.62 per thousand where the Scheduled Caste share is below 10% to 6.12 per thousand where it is 40% or more. Completed deletions rise across the same range from 5.74 to 13.76.This geography overlaps with Bengal’s border districts and its Matua belt, and these tables cannot separate the effect of caste composition from location. What they show is that constituencies with large Scheduled Caste populations experienced both weaker inclusion outcomes and substantially higher deletions.Muslim constituencies faced a different disadvantageMuslim-heavy constituencies faced a different brand of disenfranchisement. The data does not show a massive concentration of Form 7 deletions in Muslim majority seats. Instead, the administrative hostility manifested as sheer inertia. The more Muslim-populated constituencies saw significantly slower Form 6 disposal rates and far fewer completed additions. Completed additions fell from 9.89 per 1,000 electors in low minority areas to just 7.14 in constituencies where minorities made up at least 60% of the population. The state simply stopped processing their paperwork.The absolute number of additions technically exceeded deletions statewide. But the annexures prove something far more insidious about an electoral machinery which has prioritised deletion over inclusion.Discovering whether this reflects a deliberate policy requires the Election Commission to disclose their policy. Until the court forces that transparency, the constitutional guarantor of the vote continues to operate as its primary threat.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.