Tharoor Links BJP's Bengal Win To SIR Deletions While Sharing Stage With Tejasvi Surya And Annamalai | Watch

At a recent roundtable discussion, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor raised several questions around the process of the West Bengal Assembly election 2026. The Thiruvananthapuram MP credited the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory in the Bengal elections to the large-scale deletion of names from voter lists during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and the delay in verifying appeals. Tharoor made these remarks while sharing the stage with BJP leaders Tejasvi Surya and K Annamalai at the Stanford India Conference in San Francisco, United States.

Referring to SIR, Tharoor said, "Around 91 lakh names were removed from the voter list, out of which about 34 lakh people filed appeals and claims. Even after this, very few people were able to get their voting rights back. Due to this, most of the cases remained unresolved at the time of voting."

#WATCH | San Francisco, USA: Speaking at the roundtable on 'India, That is Bharat: Growth Governance and Identity' at Stanford India Conference, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor says, "About the SIR... there are legitimate questions to answer. Look at the Bengal case. 91 lakh names… pic.twitter.com/QpysPZcVV1

— ANI (@ANI) May 10, 2026

32 Lakh People Could Be Genuine Voters: Tharoor

Tharoor said, "According to the rules, each case had to be resolved separately. Therefore, only a few hundred cases were resolved before the voting. Even today, there are approximately 31-32 lakh people who were actual voters, but they have lost their chance to vote. In the coming years, they may regain their voting rights."

Pointing to the scale of the figures, he said that the BJP's victory margin, which was nearly 30 lakh votes, closely matches the number of pending voter appeals. This raises the question of whether eligible voters were actually unable to cast their votes. He further questioned if this was “completely fair and democratic”.

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Congress Benefited From SIR In Kerala

Tharoor said that the removal of duplicate or multiple voter registrations in Kerala benefited the Congress party. He claimed that Kerala had previously encountered cases where the same person had been registered two, three, or even four times. Removing these fake names had cleaned up voter lists, which had historically been plagued by malpractices by opposing political parties.

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“In Kerala, I suspect the Congress benefited from the deletions because the CPIM was long a past master of double, triple, quadruple enrollment... That used to happen. So they were eliminated by the SIR,” he said.