Caste, Citizenship and the Voter List: How SC Politics and SIR Will Shape West Bengal’s 2026 Election

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When West Bengal votes for a new Assembly in 2026, the contest will not just be between parties or even between ideologies. It will be fought at the intersection of caste, citizenship and the voter list itself. Scheduled Castes (SCs) form 23.5% of Bengal’s population—well above the national average of 16.6%—and the state accounts for around 10.7% of India’s total SC population. (IJHSSI)

Over the last decade, this large SC bloc has moved from being embedded in a class-centric, Left-dominated political culture to becoming a central actor in identity-based mobilisations led by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Now a new variable has entered the arena: the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, based on the 2002 voter list and timed directly ahead of the 2026 polls. (Election Commission of India)

In this emerging landscape, TMC, BJP and the Left are all trying to speak to SC communities—but they are doing so with very different languages and very different anxieties in mind.

1. SC Bengal: A Large, Unequal and Fragmented Electorate

Census 2011 makes clear just how central SCs are to Bengal’s politics: nearly one in four residents belongs to Scheduled Castes. (IJHSSI) They are not a single bloc but a mosaic of sub-castes with distinct histories and geographies:

  • Rajbanshis dominate much of north Bengal (Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, parts of Uttar Dinajpur), combining caste identity with ethnic and regional claims.
  • Namasudras / Matuas, many with a refugee background from present-day Bangladesh, are concentrated in Nadia and the 24 Parganas belt, where citizenship and documentation have shaped their politics. (The Financial Express)
  • Bagdi/Duley, Bauri, Pod/Poundra and others are scattered across Bardhaman, Bankura, Hooghly and south Bengal districts, often with long histories as landless labourers or marginal peasants. (Census India)

Research on literacy patterns shows that SC communities in Bengal remain among the most socially and educationally disadvantaged groups, with wide district and sub-caste disparities. SC literacy is highest in places like North 24 Parganas and Kolkata, and much lower in districts such as Bankura, Purulia, Malda and Murshidabad. (ijels.com)

There is also a clear urban–rural divide. Kolkata’s SC share is low compared to the state average, while SCs are overrepresented in poorer rural districts that have fewer jobs, weaker infrastructure and limited higher education access. This unequal geography of opportunity has shaped how different sub-castes experience the state—and how they respond to competing political appeals.

Historically, these inequalities are rooted in the Permanent Settlement of 1793, which privileged upper-caste zamindars, and in the Bengal Renaissance, whose benefits in education and cultural capital accrued primarily to the bhadralok elite, not to Dalit communities. The result: SCs entered independence with a weaker foothold in land, schools and state institutions than the upper-caste classes that led both nationalist and reformist politics. (westbengal.census.gov.in)

2. 1977–2011: Left Class Politics and the Limits of “Caste-Blind” Mobilisation

For more than three decades after 1977, West Bengal was governed by the Left Front, led by the CPI(M). Its political language was anchored in class, not caste. Land reform—especially Operation Barga, which recorded sharecroppers’ rights—did benefit many lower-caste cultivators, including SCs. (Wikipedia)

But this class-first approach had two consequences:

  1. Caste grievances were submerged under a broader “peasant vs landlord” narrative. Dalit discrimination, humiliation and exclusion from upper-caste controlled institutions rarely became explicit, mass political issues.
  2. The urban upper-caste bhadralok who had accumulated educational and cultural capital in the colonial era often became the ideological and administrative face of the Left itself, limiting upward mobility for SC leaders within the party hierarchy.

For a long time this model worked electorally. But by the 2000s, agrarian stagnation, industrial policy failures (e.g., Singur and Nandigram) and generational shifts began to erode the Left’s base. When the TMC displaced the Left in 2011, it was not just a change of government; it was the beginning of a deeper shift from class-centric to identity-layered politics. (Wikipedia)

3. 2011–2021: TMC’s Welfare Politics and BJP’s Caste–Citizenship Strategy

Under Mamata Banerjee, the TMC built a broad populist coalition anchored in welfare schemes (Kanyashree, Sabooj Sathi, Swasthya Sathi), Panchayat-level patronage networks and a strong Bengali sub-nationalist narrative. Between 2016 and 2021, TMC’s vote share rose from about 45% to 48%, consolidating its “party of governance” status. (ideasforindia.in)

At the same time, the BJP surged from a fringe player to the main opposition, with its vote share rising from around 10.5% in 2016 to about 38% in 2021, and seats from 3 to 77. (Wikipedia) Much of this growth came from:

  • North Bengal, including SC-dominated constituencies in Cooch Behar and Jalpaiguri, where the BJP either won or ran a very close second in multiple SC-reserved seats. (Wikipedia)
  • Matua / Namasudra belts in Nadia and North 24 Parganas, where the BJP’s promise to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) appealed to refugee-origin Hindus who feared insecure documentation. (The Financial Express)

The BJP’s strategy blended Hindu majoritarianism with targeted SC outreach:

  • In Matua areas, it foregrounded CAA as a route to secure citizenship for Hindu refugees, positioning itself as the community’s protector. (The Financial Express)
  • In north Bengal, leaders emphasised “infiltration” and border security, signalling alignment with Rajbanshi concerns about demographic change. (The Financial Express)

TMC responded by:

  • Expanding community-specific recognitions (e.g., declaring the birth anniversary of Harichand Thakur, the Matua spiritual leader, a state holiday). (Wikipedia)
  • Doubling down on welfare and Duare Sarkar outreach to bypass middlemen and connect directly with poor households, including SCs. (Wikipedia)

Caught between these two poles, the Left’s vote share collapsed to about 5.7% in 2021, winning zero seats in the Assembly for the first time since independence, despite contesting as part of a Congress–ISF alliance. (Wikipedia) Left leaders themselves later argued that identity polarisation between TMC and BJP left little visible space for a class-centred alternative. (ThePrint)

4. What Is SIR and Why It Matters for 2026

Into this already fraught landscape has entered the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, launched by the Election Commission across 12 states, including West Bengal.

According to the EC’s own documentation, SIR is designed as a ground-up verification exercise to create “pure electoral rolls” by cleaning duplicates, deleting names of the deceased or migrated, and adding new electors. It is legally justified as a periodic revision under electoral law and Article 326 of the Constitution. (Election Commission of India)

What makes SIR politically sensitive in Bengal are three features:

  1. The 2002 base roll: West Bengal is being asked to verify voters against the 2002 electoral roll, with citizens told to check their presence in that list and provide documentation if there are discrepancies. (CEO West Bengal)
  2. Timing: The draft revised roll is scheduled for December 2025, with the final roll due in February 2026, just months before the Assembly polls. (Goodreturns)
  3. The Bihar precedent: In Bihar, a similar SIR exercise ahead of its 2025 election led to the deletion of roughly 65–69 lakh names from the rolls, triggering opposition protests, Left mobilisation and Supreme Court scrutiny. (News on Air)

In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee has denounced SIR as a “hidden NRC plot”, vowing to resist any attempt to implement NRC in the state and warning that no one’s rights can be “snatched in the name of SIR or NRC.” (The Economic Times) TMC leaders have linked SIR to CAA/NRC and accused the Centre of using it as a political weapon before 2026. (The Times of India)

A detailed report in Scroll captures how, on the ground in north Bengal, ordinary Muslims and poor voters fear exclusion over minor spelling errors or mismatched documents, leading many to say, “In Bengal, SIR is NRC.” (Scroll.in)

The BJP, by contrast, has welcomed SIR as a technical clean-up necessary to remove fake voters and “infiltrators”, and has repeatedly stitched it into its ongoing campaign around CAA and border security. (The Times of India)

The Left too has taken a sharp stand—but in a different idiom. CPI(M)’s Polit Bureau has formally opposed the extension of SIR, calling it a threat to voting rights if used to mass-delete names without due safeguards, while Left formations in Bihar have denounced SIR as the “biggest attack” on the Constitution in terms of disenfranchisement. (peoplesdemocracy.in)

Thus SIR has become a political issue in its own right, not just administrative housekeeping.

5. How SIR Intersects with SC and Regional Politics

The impact of SIR will not be uniform. It will be felt differently in three broad zones where SC politics is already distinctive:

(a) North Bengal: Rajbanshi SC Belt

In Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar and parts of Uttar Dinajpur, SCs—particularly Rajbanshis—form a large share of the population. These are precisely the districts where BJP performed strongly in 2021, winning or leading in several SC-reserved and general seats. (Wikipedia)

Here SIR interacts with:

  • Rajbanshi sons-of-soil politics, which views unchecked migration from across the border as a threat to local demography.
  • BJP’s narrative that SIR will cleanse the rolls of “illegal infiltrators” while CAA will protect Hindu refugees. (The Wire)

A section of Rajbanshi opinion may therefore support SIR, seeing it as a tool to reassert regional control. But if deletions disproportionately affect poor Hindus and SCs themselves, TMC and Left will attempt to reframe SIR as an arbitrary attack on the poor, not just on minorities.

(b) Southern Refugee–SC Belt: Namasudras, Matuas and Pod/Poundras

In Nadia, North 24 Parganas and parts of South 24 Parganas and Howrah, SC politics is shaped by Partition and refugeehood. The Matua/Namasudra community has been courted aggressively by the BJP through CAA promises and symbolically through Matua leaders within the party. (The Financial Express)

For these groups, SIR creates a double documentation burden:

  1. Prove continuity with the 2002 electoral roll to stay on the list; (CEO West Bengal)
  2. Use a separate set of documents and criteria to claim CAA benefits if their citizenship status is questioned. (The Times of India)

If SIR is seen as harassment without guaranteed CAA relief, TMC’s line—that CAA/SIR/NRC are tools to intimidate Bengali refugees and Muslims alike—could regain traction. The Left will try to frame this as an assault on working-class and Dalit security, regardless of religion.

(c) Mixed Muslim–SC Districts: Murshidabad, Malda, South 24 Parganas

In districts like Murshidabad, Malda and parts of South 24 Parganas, Muslims are numerous, but SCs also form a significant component of the electorate. In 2021, the BJP struggled here despite respectable SC numbers, because TMC’s organisational network and Muslim consolidation outweighed caste arithmetic. (IndiaVotes)

In these areas:

  • SIR anxiety is most pronounced among Muslims who already have voter IDs and ration cards but fear being dropped for technical reasons. (Scroll.in)
  • TMC is likely to be seen as the primary shield against exclusion, while the Left and Congress may try to rebuild relevance as principled defenders of citizenship rights. (The Times of India)

Here, SC voters are drawn into a religion-charged citizenship debate, even when their immediate concerns remain jobs, welfare and basic services.

6. TMC, BJP and the Left: Competing Frames for 2026

Trinamool Congress: Rights + Welfare + Bengali Identity

Heading into 2026, TMC will likely knit together three strands:

  1. Rights defence: Presenting SIR, CAA and NRC as a combined threat to the poor, minorities and refugees—something Mamata Banerjee has already called a “hidden NRC plot” that she will resist “till her last breath.” (The Economic Times)
  2. Welfare delivery: Using Duare Sarkar and other schemes to tighten bonds with rural SCs and women across communities, especially after 2024–25 bypolls where TMC continued to expand its footprint. (ideasforindia.in)
  3. Bengali sub-nationalism: Pitting “Banglar mati, Banglar jal” (Bengal’s soil and water) against what it portrays as an aggressive, Hindi–Hindutva–Delhi axis trying to dictate citizenship and electoral rolls.

For SC communities, TMC will argue that jobs, welfare and protection from arbitrary deletion matter more than identity experiments or communal polarisation.

Bharatiya Janata Party: Caste–CAA–Security Triangulation

The BJP’s challenge is to convert its 2019–2021 momentum into a durable base despite falling short in 2021. Its likely pillars:

  1. SC Hindu consolidation:
    • In the north, by aligning with Rajbanshi and other SC groups around themes of “infiltration” and border security; (The Financial Express)
    • In the south, by re-energising Matua and refugee-SC support via CAA implementation drives and publicised registration camps. (The Times of India)
  2. Clean rolls narrative: Framing SIR as a neutral, technocratic exercise to remove fake voters and ensure one-person-one-vote, dismissing fears of disenfranchisement as TMC “scaremongering.” (Election Commission of India)
  3. National leadership appeal: Projecting the 2026 vote as an opportunity to align Bengal with the central government’s policy direction on development, security and citizenship.

The risk for BJP is that visible deletion shocks, especially among poorer Hindus or SCs, could undermine its “protector” image and be exploited by TMC and the Left.

The Left: From Margins to Moral–Political Critique

The Left Front, reduced to 5–6% votes and no Assembly seats in 2021, now operates more as a movement and moral voice than as a mainstream electoral challenger. (Wikipedia)

Its distinctive role in the SIR–caste–citizenship triangle could be:

  1. Civil liberties and constitutional critique
    The CPI(M) Polit Bureau and other Left forces have already framed SIR as a potential attack on voting rights, drawing on the Bihar experience where 65–69 lakh voters were removed. (peoplesdemocracy.in)
    This allows the Left to position itself as defender of universal franchise, not of any single community.
  2. Class lens on SC and minority distress
    While acknowledging caste, the Left is likely to argue that poor SCs, Muslims and OBCs share a common vulnerability to bureaucratic exclusion and economic precarity. This keeps the class narrative alive, but now tied to concrete issues like SIR, welfare access and jobs.
  3. Opposition “anchor” in some regions
    Recent bypolls like Kaliganj show that in pockets, the Congress–Left vote has inched up, even as BJP’s share dipped, suggesting some limited space for a third pole where TMC fatigue and BJP polarisation both face scepticism. (The Times of India)

Realistically, the Left is unlikely to dominate 2026, but it can shape the debate—especially on SIR and labour–agrarian issues—and perhaps become a narrative setter in a few constituencies if the TMC–BJP contest tightens.

7. 2026: What to Watch

Rather than a prediction, it is more useful to think of 2026 as a set of interacting scenarios:

  1. Extent and pattern of deletions/additions under SIR
    • If deletions are scattered and transparently justified, SIR may remain a second-order issue.
    • If they are concentrated in border districts, slums and poorer rural areas, it could turn into the central political controversy of the election, especially if cases emerge of living voters marked “dead” or “shifted”—as in Bihar. (The Economic Times)
  2. Behaviour of key SC blocs
    • Rajbanshis and northern SCs: Do they stay with BJP on a SIR–CAA–security plank, or fragment under local grievances and anti-incumbency?
    • Namasudras/Matuas and southern SCs: Does the combination of SIR and CAA camps consolidate them behind BJP, or does TMC’s rights-and-welfare narrative claw back support? (The Indian Express)
  3. Left’s ability to re-insert class into an identity-saturated contest
    If the Left (and allied forces) can convincingly connect SIR, price rise, unemployment and welfare leakages into a single story of economic and democratic dispossession, it could rebuild pockets of relevance, especially among young SC, Muslim and working-class voters who feel trapped between TMC patronage and BJP polarisation.
  4. Women’s vote and welfare politics
    As seen in 2021 and subsequent bypolls, women voters—many of them SC or from other marginalised groups—have often leaned towards TMC, attracted by cash transfers and local welfare delivery. (ideasforindia.in) How they interpret SIR—as a distant technicality or a direct threat to their ration card, pension and vote—may be decisive.

Conclusion

West Bengal’s 2026 Assembly election will not just be TMC vs BJP with the Left as a faded backdrop. It will be a test of how:

  • A large, diverse SC electorate negotiates competing appeals of caste recognition, religious identity, refugee citizenship and welfare dependence;
  • A new documentation regime—SIR, anchored to the 2002 roll—reshapes not only who votes, but who feels secure enough to claim political voice; and
  • The Left, TMC and BJP each try to occupy the language of rights, dignity and belonging.

If the last decade was about Bengal’s shift from a “party society” to an “identity society”, the next election may show whether the state is entering an era of “documentation society”—where your place in the polity depends as much on your place in the voter list as on your caste, class or community.

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