Explained: This article explains the political background, key decisions, and possible outcomes related to Explained : Bengal SIR hits Muslims with genuine documents hardest, ECI silent and Its Impact and why it matters right now.
The head of the department of Bengali, Md Saifullah, has been known as just Saifullah all his life because his headmaster forgot to add the prefix ‘Md’. His passport, PAN, Aadhaar and even his PhD certificate name him as ‘Saifullah’. His father, who passed away in 2014, was named Md Asaduzzaman in the 2002 voter card. While filling the enumeration form during the SIR, Saifullah wrote his father’s name as simply ‘Asaduzzaman’.
“Five generations of my family are buried in the village graveyard,” he fumes. “We can trace back our roots here to 250 years.” Yet he, his younger brother and his mother are all ‘under adjudication’, he told The Telegraph.
Sheikh Ashfaque Ali — or Ashfaque Ali Sheikh? The deputy registrar at Aliah also finds himself unable to explain to the satisfaction of officials that his father, named Sheikh Tabarak Ali in 2002 and simply Tabarak Ali in 2026, is the same person. Ali too submitted his passport, but to no avail.
Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar was asked during his visit to Kolkata last week about the disproportionate number of such cases. How is the spelling of a father’s name — who in many cases is deceased — relevant in determining the son’s eligibility as a valid voter? No reply was given, and none is expected either from the ECI or the Supreme Court.
What it has done is confirm the suspicion that the exercise is designed to disenfranchise Muslims, who constituted 28 per cent of the state’s population in the 2011 Census.