The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal led to the removal of 484 electors from the Chinese community in three assembly seats of Kolkata. The Sabar Institute analysed voter lists from Kasba, Entally, and Chowrangee constituencies. Kasba, home to Kolkata’s Chinatown, saw 307 deletions (160 men, 147 women). Entally had 56 deletions (30 men, 26 women), while Chowrangee recorded 121 deletions (62 men, 59 women). Souptik Halder, a Sabar Institute researcher, said, "By deploying a program trained on a data frame of common Chinese sounding names across lakhs of records, we confirmed that 484 individuals have been excluded from the voter rolls. However, as the dataset may not have captured less common names, we believe these figures represent a conservative undercount of the actual disenfranchisement within the community." Most of the deleted electors, 389 out of 484, were categorized as untraceable or absent—meaning they did not collect SIR enumeration forms. Ashin Chakraborty from Sabar Institute noted, "With 389 of 484 excluded electors labelled ‘untraceable’, these findings raise concerns about the sensitivity of a verification process that may be failing to reach genuine, long-standing residents." Sabir Ahamed of the same institute added, "Kolkata has always been a cosmopolitan city, and Chinese people have been an integral part of its culture. Over the past several decades, there has been a decline in the population of Chinese people, and they are restricted to a few pockets in the city." He estimates around 2,000 people of Chinese descent currently live in Kolkata. In total, about 58 lakh names were deleted in the first phase of SIR in West Bengal. Kolkata’s 11 assembly seats accounted for 6.06 lakh deletions. Kolkata North recorded the highest percentage (25.92%) of deletions linked to ‘absent, shifted, dead and duplicate’ voters in the state. This update was published on January 12, 2026, at 02:41 am IST.