West Bengal, India – Nabijan Mondal, 73, has voted in every Indian election – national, state or local – for the past 50 years.Suddenly, she finds her name missing from the list of voters published by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in her home state of West Bengal as it heads for a two-phase assembly election on April 23 and April 29, with votes to be counted on May 4.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listIn the run-up to the election, the ECI this month revised its electoral rolls through special intensive revision (SIR), a controversial exercise India’s election authorities have conducted in more than a dozen states and federally-governed territories so far.Nabijan’s husband, three sons and a daughter, as well as their spouses, all made it to the final list. But she did not.The reason: all these years, Nabijan and her family had not paid much attention to the fact that she went by “Nabijan”, her nickname, on the voter card, and “Nabirul” on other government documents, including her biometric ID (Aadhaar) and ration cards. Nabijan Mondal at her home in Gobindapur village, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal [Ritwika Mitra/Al Jazeera]Nabijan is among more than nine million people to lose voting rights in West Bengal – nearly 12 percent of the state’s 76 million voters, after the SIR process was concluded earlier this month. Almost six million of these nine million voters have been declared absentee or deceased, while the remaining three million will be unable to vote until special tribunals hear their cases.But that seems unlikely, given that the tribunals will not be able to hear such a large volume of cas …
