Dozens of Missionaries of Charity nuns regained voting rights in West Bengal after challenging their removal from electoral rolls amid controversy over voter list revisions.
Newsroom (29/04/2026 Gaudium Press) Around 55 nuns from the Missionaries of Charity congregation successfully cast their votes in the second phase of West Bengal’s state assembly elections on April 29, following a legal and administrative battle to restore their names to the electoral roll.
The nuns, members of the religious order founded by St. Teresa of Kolkata, had earlier discovered that their names were missing from the voter list published on February 28. After formally petitioning the Election Commission of India (ECI) and pursuing legal recourse, their names were reinstated following scrutiny and included in a supplementary voter list released on April 28.
All the nuns are registered voters in Kolkata’s Chowringhee constituency. According to reports, 35 had listed the congregation’s Mother House as their permanent address. Their restoration came just in time for participation in the second round of polling.
The deletions occurred under the ECI’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a controversial exercise launched in October last year to update electoral rolls in several poll-bound states, including West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. In West Bengal alone, approximately 9.1 million names were removed from a total voter base of around 76 million.
The ECI has defended the revision as a necessary and lawful effort to eliminate duplicate, deceased, or otherwise ineligible voters. However, the scale and timing of the removals have drawn sharp criticism from political parties and civil society groups.
West Bengal’s ruling All India Trinamool Congress (AITMC), led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, has described the process as a “voter purge” and alleged it was designed to benefit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which governs at the federal level under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Media reports indicate that minority Muslims, who constitute roughly 27 percent of the state’s electorate and are widely seen as AITMC supporters, were disproportionately affected by the deletions.
Church representatives and activists have echoed concerns about the process. Farrell Shah, director of Social Communications for the Archdiocese of Calcutta, described the reinstatement of the nuns’ voting rights as a relief not only for them but for many Christians who had faced similar challenges.
“It is a great relief not only for the MC nuns but also for many Christians across the state who had been struggling to get their names back on the voter list,” Shah said on April 29. He added that many eligible voters had been “flagged and denied the right to vote,” calling the revision process both hasty and exclusionary.
A Christian activist, speaking anonymously, characterized the SIR as anti-minority and questioned its timing. He suggested that conducting the revision closer to the election left insufficient time for affected individuals to gather required documentation such as birth or parental certificates.
Tribunal hearings held ahead of the first phase of polling on April 23 saw around 120 nuns called to verify their eligibility. While some cases were resolved promptly, others were delayed due to missing documentation.
Despite the hurdles, the reinstated nuns were able to participate in the democratic process. According to Shah, many were seen queuing at polling stations “just like any other citizen,” marking the end of weeks of uncertainty.
Vote counting for the 294-seat West Bengal state assembly is scheduled for May 4, when the full political impact of the election—and the controversy surrounding the voter roll revision—will become clearer.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from UCA News
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