On Saturday, Mamata Banerjee stood before a crowd in minority-dominated Manikchak, Malda and asked a simple question: how many of you have found your names missing from the voter list? As hands went up in large numbers, the chief minister appeared visibly stunned. That moment, more than any slogan, captured the scale of the crisis unfolding in West Bengal’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, a process that has reportedly pushed 24 to 25 lakh people into uncertainty just weeks before polling.What has deepened the anxiety is not only the scale of deletion, but the profile of those affected. Among those reportedly struck off or placed under consideration are poor daily-wage workers, housewives and farmers – and also a Kargil war veteran, a decorated Indian Air Force (IAF), a former Calcutta High Court judge and several retired bureaucrats. Most of them are Muslims.Wing Commander Md Shamim Akhtar (Retd.), a decorated IAF veteran, was not called for a hearing, but found his name under adjudication. Photo: By arrangement.For many, the shock is not merely administrative. It is existential. A citizen who has voted for years is suddenly being asked to prove, once again, that they belong.On March 28, Wing Commander Md Shamim Akhtar (Retd.), a decorated Indian Air Force (IAF) veteran found his name deleted from the voter list. A resident of Kolkata’s Entally assembly constituency, Akhtar has been voting for the past few decades and had mapped himself with the 2002 electoral roll during the enumeration process. He was not called for a hearing, but found his name under adjudication in the final roll.Frantic calls to the Booth Level Officer (BLO) did not help him. “I once held a diplomatic passport. Now, my citizenship is under question. I have applied to the tribunal through the online process. My name might get cleared, but what happens to thousands of others? Why do we Bengalis have to prove our nationality for our mother tongue?” asked an anguished Akhtar.For Mohammad Dual Ali, a Kargil veteran who suffered injuries in combat, the confrontation is more about the collapse of dignity itself.Mohd Dual Ali, Kargil war veteran, who fears he may lose his right to vote due to the SIR process placing his name “under adjudication”. Photo: By arrangement.“I am a former Indian Army personnel. Today, with deep pain, I have to say that the very country for which I shed blood is questioning my citizenship and has taken away my voting rights,” said Ali, who was initially called for a hearing and then found his name under adjudication despite submitting army records. “I submitted all the necessary papers for myself and my family, including my passport and service records. Even then, our names were removed from the voter list. Today, I am being forced to prove that I am a citizen of this country, that I am a voter. For me, this is not just a legal battle. It is a fight for dignity and self-respect,” he added.Yet the mechanism meant to address these grievances remains shrouded in confusion. The tribunal that is supposed to hear appeals has still not started functioning, even as the election is less than three weeks away.On the outskirts of Kolkata, at the Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee National Institute of Drinking Water and Sanitation in Bishnupur, people have been arriving day after day, carrying bundles of documents, only to be told that the work has not yet started. “Every morning, crowds of people from far-off places arrive with bags full of documents,” a security guard at the premises told The Wire on Saturday.“I ask them if they were summoned, and they say they heard their issues would be settled here. I can’t make them understand that the tribunal’s work hasn’t started yet. Even they have no information.”The uncertainty is not just about where to go, but when the clock starts ticking. “The tribunal has not started functioning yet. We still do not know whether the fifteen-day deadline for filing appeals will be counted from the day the tribunal begins operations – or from the date the list [of electors] was published,” Imroz Reza, an IT professional who is part of the All Bengal Citizenship and Voting Rights Protection Committee, a newly formed forum actively supporting the affected citizens to regain their voting rights, said. “We are advising voters to apply online so they have proof of submitting their applications and documents on time, which the authorities cannot later deny.”That advice, however, opens up another harsh reality: for a vast number of those affected, filing online is a challenge. Millions of poor and rural voters are being told that technology may be their safest route to preserve their franchise, but digital access remains deeply unequal in the state.In West Bengal, only 19% of rural households have internet access. Smartphone ownership in rural areas is estimated at only around 18%, far behind urban levels. Among rural women, internet usage remains especially low, with one survey placing it at just 25.5%.In large parts of rural Bengal, the internet is not a public utility but a privilege.That means the online route is not a neutral administrative solution. It shifts the burden of citizenship onto those least equipped to bear it. A farmer, domestic worker, mason or elderly widow whose name has disappeared from the rolls may now be expected to navigate forms, upload documents, access OTPs and preserve digital proof, often without a smartphone, stable internet connection or any prior experience with online applications.Firoza Bibi Mondal with her IDs, worried that she will not be allowed to vote in this election. Photo: Aparna Bhattacharya.Fifty-six-year-old Firoza Bibi Mondal, a house help in New Town on Kolkata’s outskirts, has voted in every election since 1989. She has all the official documents a citizen can be expected to have – PAN card, Aadhaar number, bank passbook – and EPIC card, her election ID card. During the enumeration process last November, she managed to map herself and even trace her father’s name in the records.Yet a discrepancy in her EPIC card, where her name appears as Firoja Bibi Mondal, wife of Moktar Ali Mondal, has cost her dearly. On Saturday, she found her name in the tenth “deleted” voter list published by the Election Commission of India, while the rest of her family was cleared.Firoza Bibi Mondal’s name features in the list of deleted voters on Serial Number 176.“What will happen to me now? Will I lose all my rights? How do I appeal against this?” she asked. Firoza can barely read or write, uses a basic phone and struggles even to search for contacts in her phonebook.For many like her, the right to vote now depends on local agents, political intermediaries or relatives who may or may not be able to help her.The brick and mortar process is hardly easier. For people in districts like Howrah, Hooghly, North 24 Parganas or South 24 Parganas, reaching the tribunal in Bishnupur is no small task. From Howrah or Sealdah, the state’s two principal rail gateways, the journey to the tribunal requires boarding multiple buses and more than an hour of travel, often much longer for those coming from villages beyond the city. There is no convenient passenger bus stop at the site, forcing people to walk long stretches after getting off on the highway. For the poor, distance is not measured only in kilometres. It is measured in lost wages, borrowed fare and meals skipped.The SPM National Institute of Drinking Water and Sanitation in Bishnupur, where a tribunal is supposed to hold sittings for every deleted voter in West Bengal, bears a deserted look. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.The human cost is already visible. Sajal Das, a daily wage worker from Udaynarayanpur in Howrah, came with three others after hearing that the tribunal might restore their voting rights. They travelled all the way, but only to return without an answer.“Everyone’s name was on the list earlier, and we all have the necessary documents. But the commission is not accepting them and is directing us to the tribunal. We are daily wage earners. It costs each of us 300 rupees just to travel here from our village. Despite this, nothing happened. It feels like they won’t let us vote this time,” he said.The fear is shared by many standing outside the unfinished tribunal. Rabin Sardar, an underprivileged man from Amtala, stood clutching a cloth bag of documents and asked despairingly, “Will we not get our right to vote this time?”There is one notable exception. On Sunday, an SIR tribunal ordered the restoration of Congress candidate Mehtab Sheikh’s name to the voter rolls for Farakka in Murshidabad after examining his documents. He is the first deleted voter in Bengal to be cleared by the tribunal.But Sheikh’s case also throws the inequalities of the process into sharper relief. As a Congress nominee and a wealthy contractor, he could move the Supreme Court on April 2 and secure directions for the tribunal to decide his case promptly and for the Election Commission to extend full cooperation. Others at the tribunal gates, standing clutching their precious papers, may not be so privileged.Also read: In the Bengal SIR, When the State Fails, the Voter PaysPoll panel sources said judicial officers had decided, one way or another, on 58 lakh of the 60.06 lakh “under adjudication” cases, and that the rest, roughly 2 lakh, would be completed by Monday, April 6. They cited a rejection rate of 42% at the level of the judicial officials, which would imply that at least 25 lakh people could end up deleted from the rolls.April 6 is the last day for filing nominations for the first-phase seats, and April 9 for the second-phase seats. These are also the final dates for voter inclusion in the rolls for those phases.The question hanging over the voters of West Bengal is a simple, but brutal one: Where exactly are these 25 lakh people supposed to appear, and when? There is no clarity on how such an enormous number of appeals could be heard within days. With around 19 retired judges expected to decide the fate of lakhs of voters, the arithmetic itself raises questions. Can a process of this scale deliver justice? And if it cannot, what becomes of those left behind?There is also a deeper fear that many affected families whisper but few officials address. What happens if the tribunal rejects an appeal? Will those whose names are not restored lose their right to vote in this election? Could they be pushed into a more stigmatised category – seen as ‘doubtful voters’ in effect, with the suspicion and exclusion such a label carries in society? At the moment, there are no clear answers. There are only rumours, panic and the sense that an opaque governmental process is closing in on them faster than they can react.The story then moves beyond electoral procedure to enter the realm of the republic’s moral test. The right to vote is often described as a foundational right of citizenship. But for the poor, that right is proving contingent not on law alone, but on money, mobility, connectivity, literacy and access. A retired bureaucrat may struggle with documentation. A daily labourer loses a day’s wage, pays for transport and still finds no tribunal in session. An urban resident may manage to file online. A villager without a smartphone may not even know where to begin. One faces inconvenience – the other, disenfranchisement.The most haunting image to emerge from the forthcoming West Bengal election is of ordinary people arriving with cloth bags full of voter cards, Aadhaar card copies and ration card documents, waiting outside a tribunal that is still to open for business. They are not asking for favours. They are asking for recognition. With voting less than three weeks away, the state is yet to let them know whether that recognition will come in time.Graphics: Aparna Bhattacharya.