Bahrampur: Razzak Sheikh, a resident of Mekhliganj in Cooch Behar district, has come to Bahrampur with his whole family, including women, for they have each received notices to appear at an electoral roll-related hearing. “After coming here, I see that the line is mostly made up of people from the Muslim community,” Sheikh says. “I work at an organisation in Katihar [in Bihar] and had to take leave to come here,” he says.Election officials deny that the hearing process under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal has disproportionately targeted Muslims. Instead, Booth Level Officers (BLO), appointed to conduct the process on the ground, describe a narrow set of technical criteria that has been leading people – like Sheikh and his family – to designated hearing centres, often far away from their homes.“The issues include having multiple children, inconsistencies in the age gap between parents and children and spelling mistakes in names,” one BLO said.The SIR exercise has resulted in severe overcrowding at hearing centres, leaving both voters and officials struggling. Over 80,000 BLOs have been deployed across the state, the majority of them government school teachers, who have been diverted from their classrooms over extended periods.In several parts of Cooch Behar district, the numbers raise questions. “In many booths with around 700 voters, the [Election] Commission has called over 250 people for hearings. Out of these, 70 per cent are from minority communities,” said farmer activist Akik Hossain, suggesting that the pattern extends even to the state’s border regions.In Sitai, fifty-eight-year-old Anisa Parvin stood in a government queue for the first time in her life, not counting the times when she voted. She had come to correct her name by adding the word “Bibi” to Anisa Parvin to reflect her marital status and remove any discrepancy with her other records.Political leaders say the process has generated fear rather than clarity. Cooch Behar Trinamool Congress leader Rabindranath Ghosh told The Wire, “What is happening in neighbouring Assam has had an impact here as well. Fear has been created among the poor, minority and Scheduled Caste communities.”Concerns have also emerged about how the corrections are being processed. A BLO working in the Sitai Assembly constituency said, “After we upload the data and send it onward, we hear that officials there are using AI technology. So, when the final list comes out, spelling errors may put government workers like us in even more trouble.”A similar imbalance is visible in Malda district. In the Manikchak Assembly constituency, Hindu-dominated Booth No. 49 has 1,279 voters, of whom only 73 have been called for hearings. By contrast, at minority-dominated Noorpur, from Booth No. 62, 1,200 out of 1,300 voters have received notices. Officials from the Malda district administration declined to comment on the issue.In Murshidabad, a Muslim-majority district, the scale of the SIR exercise is markedly expansive. District-level data show that of Murshidabad’s roughly 54 lakh voters, about 27.6% have been called for hearings, even though only around 2% of the electorate failed to map with the 2002 electoral roll – that is, failed to show they were present on the rolls during a previous enumeration.Also read: In West Bengal, SIR Hearing Notices Surge in Muslim-Majority DistrictsQuestioning the focus on Muslims, Murshidabad Congress leader Abdullah Kafir said long-standing economic hardships and lack of access to education have made documentation errors common in the community. Variations in spellings such as Md/Muhammad/Mohammed or Sk/Seikh/Sekh were routinely accepted earlier, he said.“Now rumours have spread among the poor that if there is any mistake in their name on voter documents, the BJP will send them to Bangladesh,” Kafir said. “As a result, migrant workers living far away are coming back for the hearings, showing documents and getting corrections made. However, a section of poor people could not come due to financial problems.”In North 24 Parganas district’s Sandeshkhali Assembly constituency, concerns escalated even before hearings began. Lists circulated in several areas, branding minority voters as deceased or non-Indian, though their source remains unknown. Similar incidents were reported from Bermajore and surrounding localities.One such list accessed by The Wire names 2,253 individuals as either non-Indian or deceased, despite their Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers, serial numbers and Part numbers (which link the voter to the polling booth) being accurate. All those listed belong to the Muslim community.Former CPI(M) MLA from Sandeshkhali, Nirapad Sardar, said, “I know many of the people whose names have appeared on lists in areas like Bayarmari and Bermajore. They are long-time residents. A young man I know, named Sirajul, was listed as dead. He was called for a hearing and asked to show his documents, only then did he ‘come back to life’. I can’t understand what game is being played to exclude minority voters.”Opposition leaders allege that the pattern reflects a political design, noting that Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari had publicly predicted the number of voter deletions even before the hearing process concluded.Rejecting these allegations, BJP West Bengal spokesperson Debojit Sarkar told The Wire, “The Election Commission is an independent body and is working in accordance with the Constitution. We want a voter list free of infiltrators and fake voters. Allegations of political influence here are completely false.”Also read: Mamata Banerjee Writes to EC Again Over ‘Irregularities’ in Bengal SIR, Raises ‘Doubts’ Over NeutralityBeyond questions of targeting, the SIR process has carried high social and economic costs. Using conservative estimates, a report by the Kolkata-based Sabar Institute found that the diversion of teachers for election duties has disrupted the learning of approximately 21.78 lakh government school students, nearly one in seven, most of them from marginalised households.“West Bengal’s schools are already facing a serious shortage of teachers, with pupil-teacher ratios increasing every year. In this context, removing thousands of teachers from classrooms harms students and severely weakens the state’s human capital formation,” said Ashin Chakraborty, who co-authored the report with researcher Souptik Halder. “Along with this, the income loss suffered by people called for hearings means the SIR has caused a large economic loss, with little to show in return.”Depending on the wage benchmark used, the cumulative economic loss is estimated between Rs 1,000 crore and nearly Rs 4,000 crore. The Sabar Institute report has also warned that more than 88,000 public personnel, including BLOs and micro-observers, were diverted from education, health and core governance functions for nearly three months.The hearings have also caused widespread economic disruption. With around 1.5 crore notices issued statewide, estimates suggest that between three crore and six crore man-days have been lost, depending on how many family members were required to attend. Citizens are estimated to have spent between Rs 300 crore and Rs 600 crore on travel, food and documentation.