Too Frail to Walk, Partially Blind, Yet Summoned: An 80-Year-Old Voter’s Ordeal at Bengal’s SIR Hearing

“I don’t really know why they called me,” said Jinnatul Bibi softly, her voice strained and tired. Wrapped in a faded sari pulled tightly over a woollen cardigan, the over-80-year-old sat shivering in a corridor at a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) hearing centre in Bengal’s Satgachia, since the crack of dawn. Her frail body sagged into the metal chair; thick glasses rested unevenly on her face.

Jinnatul Bibi had been summoned by the Election Commission of India for a hearing under the SIR exercise, a process the Commission has repeatedly described as voter-friendly. On the ground, for her, it was anything but that.

The hearing centre was located on the second floor of a three-storeyed building. There were no ramps, no wheelchairs, no drinking water, and no officials stationed downstairs to assist elderly or ailing voters. An acquaintance helped her climb the stairs. “My whole-body hurts,” she said. “I had fallen earlier. My hand broke. I lost sight in this eye. Still, I had to come,” the 80-year-old lamented.

Her name appears on the 2002 electoral rolls. It was also published in the draft voter list during the ongoing revision. Despite this, she was called for verification. “I have voted all my life,” she said. “I have voted in so many elections, I cannot even remember how many.”

For years, she worked as help in police stations, including the Budge Budge Police Station. Today, she survives on whatever clothes and food she receives from others. “My husband is dead. My sons are married and live with their in-laws. They don’t keep in touch; I live because the Pradhan looks after me. He has become like my son,” she whispered.

Initially, she refused to attend the hearing. “I said I will not go. How will I go like this?” she said. “I didn’t really have an option, I was told I must attend,” added Jinnatul Bibi. Each sentence returned to the same refrain of not having an option, she spoke of feeling bad, of the pain, of the exhaustion, but always with resignation. Coming to the hearing was not a decision she made; it was something she felt she was made to do.

The 80-year-old waited for hours. Many booths were empty when she arrived; officials came much later. No one came down to check on her. No one offered to verify her documents on the ground floor. “All I can ask them,” she said, “is to keep my name in the final voter list.”

As the pain became visible on her face, she managed to say, “I trust in Allah. Whatever has to happen will happen through Him. Till the day He takes me, I will have to keep going.” Jinnatul Bibi can barely walk without support. She cannot see with one eye. Her hand is injured. Yet she was made to leave her home, climb stairs, and wait for hours, not because her name was missing, but to prove she still belongs on the rolls.

The sense of compulsion in Jinnatul Bibi’s words mirrors the broader criticism of the Special Intensive Revision exercise in West Bengal. While the Election Commission has maintained from the outset that the process is voter-friendly and meant to facilitate corrections and inclusion, multiple accounts have emerged of elderly, frail and physically unfit voters being summoned to hearings, often with little clarity on why they were called. The Trinamool Congress has slammed the exercise as arbitrary and inhumane, arguing that it is turning verification into harassment, particularly for senior citizens, while the BJP has defended SIR as a necessary clean-up of electoral rolls. Caught between these competing claims are voters like Jinnatul Bibi, for whom participation was not a matter of convenience or choice but something she felt she “had to” do, regardless of age, injury or exhaustion.​