For Bengali workers living on Bengaluru’s urban margins, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process has become more than an exercise in checking electoral records. According to testimonies reported by The Hindu, it has meant repeated journeys to West Bengal, lost wages, fresh debt and continuing uncertainty over whether their names remain on voter rolls and whether welfare benefits linked to those records will continue.
The issue brings together three systems that are usually treated separately: electoral administration, migrant labour and informal housing. In Varthur-Balagere, workers live in makeshift tents costing between ₹3,000 and ₹4,000 a month while earning incomes as cooks, domestic helpers, cleaners, scrap collectors and delivery partners. Many work in and around gated apartments and technology parks, but their electoral and welfare lives remain tied to their home districts in West Bengal.
That geography is central to understanding the problem. These workers are physically present in Bengaluru for employment but may need to return to West Bengal to establish their identities or respond to an SIR notice. The result, as described by workers, is an administrative burden that is transferred to people with limited savings, uncertain employment and no guarantee that a journey will resolve their case.
The Karnataka Bengali Kalyan Samiti, an organisation formed by and for West Bengal-based workers in Bengaluru, estimates that more than 3,500 people are “under adjudication for logical discrepancy”. The report does not independently establish the total number of affected workers, but the estimate indicates that the issue extends beyond isolated individual cases.
For Rafiul Mohammed, the process began with an SIR notice stating that more than six children were linked to the same father, although he said the family had mapped itself accordingly. He told The Hindu that he took multiple loans totalling more than ₹1 lakh to make repeated trips to his native village and provide the required proof. His name, he said, remains “under adjudication”.
Saleem Islam described a similar cost in time and income. He said he learned about the hearing three days in advance, when train seats were available only through agents because many workers were travelling back for the SIR process. He reported making at least four trips, paying increasing charges, while continuing to pay ₹4,000 in rent in Bengaluru despite being away and earning nothing during that period.
These accounts show how a formal verification process interacts with the economics of migrant work. A salaried worker with paid leave may be able to absorb a short-notice journey. A cook, cleaner, scrap collector or delivery worker is more likely to lose income for every day spent travelling or attending a hearing. The direct cost is not limited to tickets. It can include agent charges, rent paid for an empty room, borrowing costs and the loss of work that cannot easily be recovered.
The process also exposes a mismatch between the location of work and the location of administrative proof. The workers described in the report have built their livelihoods in Bengaluru, but the records needed to establish their electoral identity may be located in West Bengal. Their mobility is therefore treated as an economic necessity in one system and as a complication requiring explanation in another.
The Election Commission of India’s enrolment drive allows deleted and left-out voters to reapply through Form 6, according to the report. However, more than 20 lakh names in West Bengal will not be part of this enrolment drive because the cases are pending before appellate tribunals. The report does not state how many of those cases involve Bengaluru-based workers, but the figure illustrates the scale of unresolved electoral status in the State.
“Under adjudication” is not the same as a final finding that a person is ineligible. Yet for a worker, unresolved status can have immediate consequences. Some people interviewed by The Hindu said their names were deleted even after they submitted documents and attended hearings. Samina, from Purba Bardhaman district, said she and her brother were flagged because the age gap between her and her 86-year-old father was more than 50 years. She said they submitted birth certificates and attended the hearing, but her name was later deleted from the rolls.
Her account also points to a basic information problem: she said she did not know her name had been removed from the draft rolls until she went to vote. In an administrative process involving mobile workers, timely communication is not a minor procedural detail. Workers who are away from their home districts may not receive notices promptly, may not understand how to respond remotely and may learn about a deletion only when they attempt to use their electoral status.
The report records allegations from some workers that they were targeted because of their family size or that the exercise was being used to reduce government benefits and remove beneficiaries within families. These are allegations made by workers and are not independently established in the supplied report. They nevertheless reveal the level of mistrust created when decisions about identity, electoral inclusion and welfare access are difficult to understand or challenge.
The welfare dimension makes the uncertainty more consequential. Sania Bibi and Roopali Khatoon, who have worked as cooks in Bengaluru for 12 years, said they had relied on payments under West Bengal’s Lakshmir Bhandar scheme to meet expenses such as medicines. Sania said the scheme had since changed to the Annapurna Yojana scheme, that the payment had doubled, and that they had been removed as beneficiaries while their ration had also been reduced. The report does not independently verify the reasons for these changes or establish whether voter-roll status caused each individual benefit interruption. It records the workers’ experience of receiving less information while their cases remain unresolved.
That distinction matters. Electoral rolls, welfare databases and ration entitlements may be administered through different mechanisms, and the supplied report does not establish a single automatic legal link between deletion from a roll and loss of every benefit. But for workers, these systems are experienced together. A change in one record can prompt fear about the others, particularly when notices, hearings and appeal procedures are not easily accessible from the city where they live and work.
Bengaluru’s informal settlements and work sites make this administrative challenge visible. In Varthur-Balagere, the workers described in the report live beside some of the city’s most formalised urban enclaves: gated apartments and technology parks. Women enter those apartments as cooks or helpers, while men serve the wider service economy as cleaners, scrap collectors and delivery workers. Their labour supports the functioning of the formal city, but their own access to stable documentation, housing and public systems remains fragile.
The housing arrangement described in the report adds another layer of vulnerability. Monthly rents of ₹3,000–₹4,000 for makeshift tents may appear lower than formal accommodation, but the arrangement offers little protection when a worker must leave the city for an uncertain period. Saleem’s account of continuing to pay rent while earning nothing illustrates how mobility can create a double expense: the cost of returning home and the cost of retaining a place in Bengaluru.
The SIR process therefore raises a broader administrative question: can a system designed around household records and place-based documentation adequately serve citizens whose livelihoods depend on movement between States? The supplied accounts suggest that the burden currently falls heavily on workers themselves. They must interpret notices, arrange travel, find documents, attend hearings, preserve income and monitor whether their names and benefits remain active.
The report also indicates that some aspects of the process were made available online for migrant workers. Saleem said he made several journeys before seeing that the process had been made online. The account points to a gap between the existence of a digital route and people’s awareness of it. An online mechanism may reduce travel only if workers know about it in time, can use it, have access to the required documents and receive a clear decision that can be challenged if necessary.
The institutional chain is consequently spread across multiple locations. The Election Commission process determines how electoral claims are handled; appellate tribunals deal with pending cases; State-level welfare systems determine benefit eligibility; and workers’ employers, landlords and intermediaries shape whether they can afford to respond. No single institution appears, from the supplied material, to be responsible for absorbing the combined cost borne by the worker.
The numbers in the report underline the scale of the pressure: more than 3,500 people are estimated by the Karnataka Bengali Kalyan Samiti to be under adjudication for logical discrepancy; more than 20 lakh names in West Bengal are described as outside the enrolment drive because their cases are pending; individual workers reported taking loans exceeding ₹1 lakh; and temporary accommodation in the Bengaluru settlements costs ₹3,000–₹4,000 a month. These figures are not directly comparable, but together they show how a documentation dispute can move from a record room into household debt and lost income.
What remains unclear from the available material is how many Bengaluru-based workers have ultimately regained inclusion, how many cases were resolved through online procedures, why individual names were deleted after documents were submitted, and how welfare agencies determine eligibility when electoral status is disputed. The report also does not provide a response from the Election Commission or the relevant welfare authorities to the workers’ allegations.
The evidence does establish a more immediate point. For migrant workers, electoral verification is not an abstract administrative exercise. It can require movement across States, repeated engagement with officials and the production of documents that may be difficult to access from the city of employment. When the process remains unresolved, the uncertainty extends beyond the right to vote into questions about income, rent, food and medical expenses.
The next stage is therefore not only the processing of applications and appeals, but also the resolution of cases that remain under adjudication. Until workers receive clear decisions and accessible information about the status of their names and benefits, Bengaluru’s migrant labour force will continue to carry the financial and administrative cost of an unresolved identity process.
