West Bengal recorded its highest ever turnout during the first phase of the 2026 Assembly election on Thursday. More than 91% of the electorate had cast its ballot as of 7.30 pm, showed the Election Commission’s (EC) provisional data.

The final figure, which the EC will release later, will likely be even higher. So why did West Bengal vote in such large numbers?

The West Bengal elections were held after the EC’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise cut a total of 91 lakh names from the state’s rolls beginning October last year.

Overall, West Bengal’s electorate was trimmed by 11.63%.

Out of those deletions, 58 lakh were cut in the draft stage, with the EC saying those electors had either died, shifted, were enrolled in multiple places or were absent during the enumeration phase of the SIR in November and December last year.

With the denominator being reduced, the turnout was expected to be higher this time.

Last time, West Bengal recorded a turnout of 81.56%. The previous voting record was in 2011 —  84.33% — when the Trinamool Congress (TMC) won for the first time.

Bengal’s experience with the process

The EC had not conducted an intensive revision since 2002, after which the electoral rolls were digitised.

The SIR broke from the EC norm of making additions and deletions to existing electoral rolls through annual and pre-election Special Summary Revisions (SSR).

The poll panel has conducted the SIR exercise in 10 states (including Bengal) and three Union Territories (UTs) so far. This has led to the cumulative deletion of 5.58 crore names.

While all states where the SIR has been conducted and elections held have seen a higher turnout than last time, West Bengal’s experience with SIR was different.

In its case, the EC — sometimes on the Supreme Court’s orders —  rolled out a series of unprecedented steps that were unique to the state.

This included the deployment of micro-observers, judicial officers and now appellate tribunals to decide on eligibility of electors.

As a result, 27.10 lakh electors who had submitted documents were deleted from the rolls. On the orders of the Supreme Court, 19 appellate tribunals were set up in March to hear appeals against these deletions. Of the more than 27 deleted lakh names, only 139 had been added back to the rolls by the tribunals as on Wednesday.

The TMC and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee have opposed the SIR ever since it was announced by the EC in June last year. Banerjee is also among the petitioners against the SIR in the Supreme Court. She had likened the process to the National Register of Citizens exercise.

The TMC repeatedly raised this issue during the election campaign. The BJP countered it by saying that the TMC government had been protecting infiltrators who were now being removed from the rolls.

As polls closed on Thursday, the TMC attempted to frame the turnout as an expression of opposition to the SIR “conspiracy”.

It said in a statement: “Despite the Election Commission deleting 91 lakh names through SIR, Bengal has delivered a record voter turnout. Why? Because the people of Bengal know this could be their last real chance to secure their future. They see the NRC and delimitation threat staring them in the face, and they have voted with full force to smash every future conspiracy of BJP.”