Bengal's 1st supplementary rolls create more confusion, fail to give clarity on voters' status

Kolkata: Lakhs of Bengal voters under judicial adjudication were on tenterhooks Tuesday after the state's first supplementary electoral rolls, published the previous midnight, failed to provide clarity about their status.

The confusion was compounded by chief electoral officer Manoj Agarwal admitting he had no answers yet."Please check the (Election Commission) website. I have not memorised how many names have been approved or rejected. I can't say," said Agarwal, who had announced Monday that 29 lakh out of 60 lakh voters marked for judicial review had made the cut.The roll call of voters left flabbergasted by vague messaging while checking their status online - "No adjudication pertaining to this part till 5pm on 23.3.2026" - included ministers, election candidates and celebrities.

Special roll observer Subrata Gupta said only Calcutta HC, which is supervising the adjudication process, could "specifically" answer the queries of voters awaiting the outcome."We can only say that about 30 lakh cases have been disposed of by judicial officers. They have not informed us how many of these contain digital signatures...All cases with digital signatures have been published. We can view the electoral rolls, but we are not supposed to see the rest of the statistics.

It would not be proper to make assumptions," he said.State ministers and Trinamool candidates Shashi Panja and Ghulam Rabbani spent the day unsure whether they would be able to contest the two-phase elections on April 23 and 29."Not just me. None of the 2,759 voters under adjudication in Shyampukur constituency know their status yet," Panja told TOI. "While I was campaigning, people kept asking me whether they would be able to vote.

I didn't know what to tell them. I don't even know if my name has been cleared."Goalpokhar MLA Ghulam Rabbani kept his phone switched off throughout the day and stayed mostly indoors after scanning the supplementary list, sources said. Kajal Sheikh, a Trinamool candidate, found out that his name hadn't been cleared either. "I hope my name will be there on the next list," he said.Former India footballer Mehtab Hossein called the BLO of his area several times and dialled contacts in the state election office for information he couldn't find online. "I checked the EC website repeatedly; it seems the part where my name is listed hasn't been updated yet. Will it be updated today or do I need to wait another week? No one has an answer," he said.(With inputs from Poulami Roy Banerjee & Dipawali Mitra)