Watch | When Lakhs Cannot Vote: Bengal SIR and Impact on Polls
Ahead of the assembly elections in West Bengal, it is not Mamata Banerjee's 15 year rule that is being discussed, or whether the BJP has done enough in the last few years to dislodge her government through persistent efforts, or whether the Congress and the Left will be able to register their presence. Instead the entire conversation in the poll-bound state has been dominated by the conduct of the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in which about 90 lakh voters have been left out, the state's electorate has shrunk by about 12% and most concerningly at least 27 lakh have their appeals pending before the state's judicial tribunals with their right to vote hanging in the balance.
So what happened in this contentious SIR exercise, what do the numbers say, how has the Election Commission acted, and what impact will this have on the election result?
The Wire's Sravasti Dasgupta is joined by Aparna Bhattacharya, data analyst and correspondent and former MP and CEO of West Bengal Jawhar Sircar.
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