Why should Bangladesh be concerned about the elections in Assam and West Bengal?

However, although this remains politically appealing as a campaign issue, the old-style “infiltrator” narrative has lost novelty. As a result, India’s ruling establishment has adopted new strategies in these states. In effect, both strategies are extensions of the long-standing theory of illegal infiltration, and they carry broad risks for Bangladesh.

What has happened in Assam to reduce the political strength of Muslims
Assam and West Bengal are among the Indian states where Muslims constitute a significant portion of the population. In Assam, they make up about 34 per cent, and in West Bengal around 27-28 percent. Although they lag behind the majority in political and economic power in every respect, during legislative assembly elections in both states, these minorities are viewed as a ‘vote bank.’

The Assam legislative assembly has 126 seats. Muslims were the majority in 35 of those constituencies. Although they support various political parties, in these 35 seats, and in several others, this minority group has played an important role in determining electoral outcomes. By portraying these Muslims as ‘infiltrators’ and turning fear of Bangladesh into a political tool, the BJP has long been in power in Assam. In 2011, the party had only 5 seats in the state; now it has 60.

In many Muslim-majority constituencies, certain areas have been merged with surrounding Hindu-majority constituencies. At the same time, some Hindu-majority areas have been added to those Muslim-majority seats.
Not only have the Muslim-majority constituencies been geographically restructured, but constituencies where Hindu and Muslim votes were nearly equal have also been redrawn in this way. The aim has been to reduce the Muslim vote bank in these seats and ensure the victory of BJP or any party’s Hindu candidates.

Where this was not possible, many Muslim-majority areas have been consolidated into a single constituency instead of multiple ones. In some cases, Muslim-majority seats have been reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. On the other hand, in regions like Karbi Anglong and the Bodo autonomous areas, the number of legislative assembly seats has been increased while reducing seats in Muslim-majority regions.

Despite this progress, the ruling power has this time worked with the goal of further reducing Muslim representation in the legislative assembly. Accordingly, it has altered the delimitation of constituencies in such a way that the number of Muslim-majority seats has dropped to 20.

These structural, multi-dimensional changes and measures resemble a kind of modern, subtle form of discrimination and have not been implemented solely to target minorities. They have also been aimed at weakening the Congress, leftist parties, and Muslim-based parties at the national level. Until now, minorities largely voted for these parties, and these parties often nominated Muslim candidates in constituencies with significant Muslim voter presence.

Now the situation has reached a point where opposition parties, due to the reconfiguration of constituencies, are compelled to nominate fewer Muslim candidates. Such (legal!) reforms of the electoral system to influence outcomes are rare in the modern world. The BJP seeks to politically weaken Muslims at two levels, within the legislative assembly and within political parties.

If this current ‘experiment’ in Assam proves successful, similar constituency reconfigurations may be carried out in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and elsewhere, potentially making the national parliament (Lok Sabha) and various state assemblies increasingly devoid of minorities. A similar exercise was also conducted in Jammu and Kashmir after its statehood was revoked.

Since Muslim minorities are already economically disadvantaged, becoming politically marginalised would likely begin to erode their social foundations. They may then seek to leave behind a life resembling displacement and move toward places where they can find human dignity. Because Assam and West Bengal border Bangladesh, and because minorities in these regions share cultural and historical ties with this side, the issue is a matter of concern for Dhaka.

Although the results in Assam have not yet been announced, many locals think that this time the state assembly may see the lowest number of Muslim representatives in its history, possibly around 20-22. In the past, however, Muslim representation in the state’s legislative body used to be around 30.

Similar concerns are being observed in West Bengal as well. However, in this state, the Election Commission appears to be pursuing a different and innovative initiative that could help fulfill the BJP’s ambitions.

West Bengal has 294 legislative assembly seats. Although the Trinamool Congress has maintained dominance in the state for the past 15 years, the BJP’s rise in terms of vote share and seats has been remarkably rapid. In 2011, the party had no seats and only 4 percent of the vote. In the next election, its vote share rose to 10 percent and it won 3 seats. By 2021, its seats increased to 77 and its vote share reached 38 percent. This progress has taken place in just one and a half decades.

In the last election, the vote difference between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP was only 10 percentage points (38 per cent  to 48 per cent). Therefore, if Trinamool’s vote share can be reduced by just 5 per cent, the BJP could achieve the rest of its target. How could that be possible?
To find the answer to that question, the SIR (Special Intensive Review) has been introduced in this border state of Bangladesh. SIR stands for “Special Intensive Review.” In Bengali, it roughly means a “special voter list updating exercise.”

Updating voter lists is a normal practice in all countries where elections are held. Typically, its aim is to remove deceased voters, people who have moved away from the area, or those who are registered more than once.
This was also carried out in West Bengal in 2002. The problem this time lies in the word “special.” Because of this “special” nature, a concept called “logical discrepancy” has been added during the updating process. Its implication is that anyone whose name or details show any kind of “discrepancy” will be removed. In addition, various documents must be submitted as proof of citizenship.

As a result of this “special” updating exercise, 9.1 million people have been excluded from the voter list in West Bengal this time. A large portion of those removed are Muslims and members of the Matua community. Both groups appear to be indirect victims of what Home Minister Amit Shah earlier referred to as “infiltrators.”

Investigations by journalists in West Bengal suggest that among the said 9.1 million, at least 4 million voters were removed due to minor errors or discrepancies in their records. According to commentators, they have become victims of a legally valid but manipulative updating process. About 65 per cent of these 4 million are said to be Muslim voters, while nearly 30 percent are Matua voters.

The BJP was aware that a major foundation of Mamata Banerjee’s “vote magic” lies in Muslim voters. Among lower-income Muslims, inconsistencies in documentation are quite common. For example, someone named “MD Hanif” might appear elsewhere as “Md. Hanif.” A woman named “Hanufa Begum” after marriage might also be recorded as “Hanufa Bibi.” Such variations between “Begum” and “Bibi” have reportedly been caught by "Artificial Intelligence"! In this way, Muslim vote banks in Trinamool strongholds have been excluded.

Some have questioned whether the exclusion of Matua voters, alongside Muslims, might also harm the BJP. It is true that a large section of the Matua community supports the BJP, but Trinamool also has a voter base among them. In an effort to corner Muslim voters, a large number of Matua voters were also excluded. As a corrective measure, the BJP is assuring that they will soon be granted citizenship. No such assurance, or possibility, exists in the case of Muslims.

The Matua community is being told quite explicitly: “Your vote will be lost once, we will fix it next time; but Muslims will be excluded permanently, think about which is better.” The BJP is having Matua leader Shantanu Thakur say things like this. Shantanu has also said, “If we have to go without voting for a year to remove 5 million Rohingyas, that would still be worth it.”

In this way, the entire election has been pushed into a deep abyss of extreme ethnic and religious polarisation.

Under the SIR’s “logical discrepancy” process, the district that lost the highest number of voting rights was Murshidabad, while the area least affected was Alipurduar, a BJP stronghold. Overall, this polarisation across the state has been shaped through the SIR process.

Given the current state of India’s national politics and the Lok Sabha, even if the BJP were to lose the legislative assembly elections in West Bengal or Assam, it would not create any serious problem for it. Moreover, the next national election is still at least three years away. However, West Bengal and Assam are important to the BJP because they are border states adjoining Bangladesh.

Hindutva ideologues believe that the political power of Muslims in these two states constitutes a “security threat.” Forcibly removing them would create widespread uproar. But the social marginalisation and economic hardship resulting from a lack of political and civic rights would gradually push these people into a situation where displacement becomes their only option. A similar situation could also arise for the Matua community.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi once campaigned even in Orakandi of Gopalganj in an effort to attract Matua votes. This time, however, under the SIR process, hundreds of thousands of Matua people across Nadia and the North and South 24 Parganas are losing their citizenship status, making the BJP’s past promises appear like deception to them. The loss of civic rights leads to deprivation in many areas such as health and education, stripping people of broader social rights. What happened in Assam through the National Register of Citizens (NRC) could effectively happen in West Bengal through SIR.

In the NRC process in 2019, 1.9 million people were excluded, the majority of whom were Bengali-speaking. In the 2026 SIR process in West Bengal, the 4 million people losing voting rights are also almost entirely Bengali-speaking. In this way, the ruling establishment in India has, at least on paper, created 5.9 million “infiltrators” on both sides of the Bangladesh border.

After the NRC in Assam, BJP’s power became more consolidated. This time, constituency reorganisation may strengthen it further. Detailed results will be known on May 4. The outcome of the intense electoral battle in West Bengal will also be clear then.

If the Trinamool Congress loses power in West Bengal, it will be a historic cause for celebration for the BJP-RSS family. In the last election, Trinamool won 45 seats by narrow margins; SIR may facilitate BJP’s advance in those constituencies. Events are unfolding quite openly.

In Nandigram, the constituency of BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, 95 per cent of those excluded under SIR were found to be Muslim. However, regardless of the outcome of the 23 and 29 April elections, whether the BJP wins or loses, and whether figures like Rupa Ganguly, Lovely Maitra, or Nusrat Jahan ultimately celebrate victory, the developments that have already taken place are sending a clear message to Bangladesh.

* Altaf Parvez is  political analyst and researcher
* The opinions expressed here are the author’s own