BJP's Bengal victory raises concerns over India's election integrity

The recent state elections in India have produced one of the most significant political outcomes in the country's contemporary history, particularly in West Bengal (WB), a border state of over 100 million people that had long resisted the advance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

For the first time in history, the BJP has gained control of Bengal, winning 207 of the 293 seats declared, while the Trinamool Congress (TMC) secured only 80 seats. One seat awaits a re-vote.

The scale of the BJP's victory has reshaped India's political map. But the result also raises profound questions about the integrity of the electoral process itself.

The election followed a controversial "Special Integrated Review" (SIR) of voter rolls conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI). The review aimed to remove duplicate, deceased, or "ineligible" voters. Across West Bengal, more than 9 million names—nearly 12% of the electorate—were initially flagged, removed from lists, or placed under scrutiny.

This review disproportionately affected Muslims, migrant workers, and poorer voters in districts where the BJP has historically struggled electorally. In many areas the BJP won, the number of voters removed or disputed exceeded the margin of victory.

The implications are severe. India may have crossed the line from 'electoral manipulation' to 'mass disenfranchisement.'

Bengal is not just another Indian state. Split in 1947 along religious lines during the violent partition of India and Pakistan, it shares a more than 2,200 km border with Bangladesh and has long held a central place in Indian political thinking. Muslims make up about 27% of the state's population and have historically voted strategically to prevent the BJP from coming to power.

That is precisely why Bengal is important to Modi.

The BJP has expanded rapidly in the state over the past decade but failed to unseat Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in 2021. Thus, the 2026 election was seen as a referendum on Banerjee's weakening administration, and a test of whether Indian elections retain their former institutional credibility.

The controversy surrounds the SIR process, first deployed in Bihar in June 2025, then extended to nine states and three Union Territories, including West Bengal.

Under this process, Booth Level Officers conducted door-to-door voter verification. Citizens were required to re-prove their electoral eligibility through documents within an extremely short deadline. Failure to do so could result in removal from the voter list.

For the first time since India adopted universal adult suffrage in its first general election of 1951-52, the burden of proving electoral eligibility was effectively shifted onto citizens themselves.

This represents a dangerous breach of the democratic contract.

The process particularly hit migrant workers hard. Bihar and Bengal are among India's largest sources of migrant labor, with millions working in distant states. Many could not return home during the brief verification window. Others faced difficulties with spelling variations, lack of original documents, surname changes after marriage, or discrepancies in official records.

These issues were especially severe for Muslims and poorer women.

The ECI insists the review was administrative and necessary to remove duplicates or fraudulent entries. The BJP described it as an effort to weed out "illegal infiltrators," specifically Muslims suspected of illegal immigration from Bangladesh.

But in Bengal, the process quickly took on the character of a political campaign.

Districts with large Muslim populations saw the highest removal rates. The process lacked transparency, while AI-assisted software designed to detect "logical anomalies" disproportionately removed Muslim names due to transliteration differences between Urdu, Bengali, and English.

The TMC repeatedly accused the ECI of functioning not as an independent body but as an extension of the ruling party's political machinery.

India's Supreme Court intervened several times but ultimately allowed the process to continue. Millions appealed after finding their names missing from the rolls. However, over 3.4 million appeals remained pending before election day, with fewer than 2,000 resolved in time. The court ruled that voters with unresolved appeals would still be barred from voting in this election, even though their names could theoretically be restored later.

That ruling effectively legalized mass disenfranchisement.

On a personal level, I experienced this process. My family had to re-prove their eligibility to remain on the voter list in Uttar Pradesh, where elections are due next year. Compared to Bengal, the deadlines there were longer and the verification less stringent. But even navigating this process reveals its harsh and exclusionary nature. The elderly, migrants, women with inconsistent documents, and poorer citizens face an administrative maze that many cannot navigate.

Some officials privately admitted that Hindu voters had less reason to fear removal than Muslims.

Ultimately, about 2.7 million voters in Bengal were officially removed from the rolls. Millions more remained trapped in unresolved appeals and verification disputes before election day.

The BJP received 29,224,804 votes, 3,211,427 more than the TMC's 26,013,377 votes. Analysts examining constituency-level data argue that in many seats the BJP won, the number of removed or disputed voters exceeded the margin of victory.

Thus, there is reason to suspect that this result was "stolen" with the assistance of state machinery, including the ECI, which is constitutionally bound to act as an impartial body.

The BJP's victory was also bolstered by a campaign promoting Hindu majoritarianism, which exaggerated the TMC's "pro-Muslim" stance and heightened Hindu insecurity.

After the BJP's defeat in the 2024 national election, when Modi lost his absolute majority and relied on coalition partners, the party began recalibrating its electoral strategy.

Part of this effort was a proposal to redraw electoral boundaries, redrawing parliamentary and state constituencies in a way that benefits the northern, Hindu-majority regions. In Assam, where the BJP also returned to power comfortably this year, previous redistricting had already weakened Muslim electoral influence in some areas.

The second initiative was expanding the SIR process across India, with its most pronounced political consequences in Bengal.

The third initiative was pushing "One Nation, One Election," a project to synchronize all state and national elections. Presented as an administrative reform, the proposal would further concentrate political power in Modi and weaken regional parties' ability to resist the BJP's national machinery.

Taken together, these developments point to an effort to permanently reshape the architecture of Indian democracy.

Large parts of India, now under BJP rule, are gripped by the ideology of Hindu majoritarianism (Hindutva). Alongside the erosion of electoral and democratic integrity, the current idea and image of India face the risk of being erased and replaced by an authoritarian, Hindu-majoritarian order.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of Al Jazeera.