heyOn February 28, the revised voter list of West Bengal was published after four grueling months of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise of the Election Commission of India (ECI). Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal pegged the number of voters after the SIR at 70.46 million, after 6.18 million deletions (see The Great Purge), which is 8.06 per cent less than 76.64 million before the exercise began. But the real headline was the asterisk: another 6 million voters were listed as ‘pending’, with their voting rights put on hold until judicial officials could decide their fate.

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