How Electoral Roll Revision Is Affecting Bengal and Bihar's Transgender Communities

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, designed to update voter lists and remove duplicate or ineligible entries, has emerged as an existential threat to transgender communities across Bengal and Bihar. For individuals whose lives are marked by social transition, family rejection, and economic precarity, SIR's rigid documentation requirements have created insurmountable barriers to democratic participation.

Sintu, a grassroots transgender activist in Kolkata, describes the crisis facing the community: "If somebody has a voter card which is in their deadname and has another card which is with their chosen name and a transgender card which is again in their chosen name, there is a documentation mismatch as well." "A lot of times when the BLOs are coming at home, many of the trans people do not stay at home, so they have to fill out their forms online."

The problem extends beyond simple administrative complexity. Transgender individuals often lack stable addresses, have been forcibly displaced from natal families, or live in informal economies, circumstances that make navigating SIR's requirements nearly impossible. As Koyel from Sappho for Equality, a queer rights NGO, explains, accessing the online system requires knowing "the EPIC number, the Aadhaar number, the constituency number and all of this information not everybody has. It becomes very difficult if you do not have access to computers, the internet and the know-how."

Anurag Moitryee, a prominent face in this rights movement for the transgender community and a transgender activist herself, highlights another critical dimension: “The persons who had transitioned up to 2002, their gender, the photos that are there in the identity proofs will not match with the photo of the voter card of 2002." For many transgender people, enumeration forms are sent to natal homes they left decades ago. "In most cases, the natal families will say they are dead because they are so ignorant and hatred is, and the stigma is to that extent that they will not even say that they are alive," Moitryee adds.

Activist Interventions and Precarious Concessions

Responding to mounting pressure, transgender activists in Bengal secured a meeting with senior election officials. The outcome was a set of partial concessions that activists view with deep ambivalence.

Koyel recounts the negotiation, "We met the administration, and they told us to submit a list with details like part number, assembly, and booth. They said if someone has no documents, they will conduct a special enquiry." The meeting also resulted in the inclusion of transgender identity cards in the list of acceptable documents—an achievement activists had to fight for. "The TG card was not included in the credentials. Activists from our community intervened, and now the TG card is included. The other card was not included for TGs; now the other card is included," Moitryee explains.

However, these victories come with significant caveats. Officials have permitted registration through "Guru Maas"—traditional leaders of the hijra community—for those lacking conventional documentation. This mechanism has sparked controversy within the community itself.

Urmi Daniella Azar, a transgender activist in Kolkata, articulates the concern, "All of these gurus, they are misleading the transgender community, saying that nothing will happen to you," Azar highlights the issue of the gharana system that has been running in the community but has now gained negative momentum due to ill practices, “They go to do begging and sex work and then guruma takes a cut out of that. Guruma loot a part of their labour. And that is why the guruma has good ties with the political parties and the police, because part of this cut she gives to them."

The reliance on Guru-Ma registration risks institutionalising exploitation rather than enabling genuine enfranchisement. Moreover, the TG card solution itself has limited reach. As Azar notes, "Most transgender people in the smaller towns do not have either knowledge or access to the transgender ID card. The poorest of transgender people on the road will not have it. They don't."

Bihar's Grim Reality

While Bengal's SIR process continues, Bihar offers a chilling preview of the consequences. Recent assembly elections revealed that only 187 of 1,700 registered transgender voters cast ballots, a turnout crisis that suggests widespread exclusion during the SIR process itself. Rajan Singh, an activist on the field, told us, “We didn’t choose to vote because nothing has been done for us. Who should we vote for? Who cares for us?” We tried contacting the sole transgender candidate of the 2025 Bihar elections, the Jan Suraaj Party candidate, Priti Kinar, who themselves has also been subjected to discrimination as their gender identity in the election documents for candidature was labelled as male, but got no responses.

The systemic nature of this disenfranchisement becomes clear through the structural barriers transgender people face. Documentation mismatches, migration-based removals, and inadequate verification processes have combined to erase many from voter rolls entirely. Unlike Bengal, where activists secured at least nominal concessions, Bihar's completed SIR appears to have proceeded with minimal safeguards for vulnerable populations.

We talked to three transgender folks who have been delisted from the roll, and under anonymity, they told us their experiences.  “I went for the verification visit, and two plainclothes policemen came asking for my family address. I have none now. They checked my EPIC and Aadhaar, then told me I’m ‘migrated’, and my name disappeared in the draft roll.” Another person told us, “I left my village years ago, after being thrown out for being trans. I stayed in a shelter and changed cities. When the BLO came, I couldn’t show any old family address or ration card; he just ticked ‘shifted out,’ and I haven’t been able to re-register.” The final account tells us a grimmer picture: “They didn’t even help me. I am illiterate, so I don’t know how to fill this out. But every officer was afraid of touching me or coming near me, and I lost it. So I’m off the list now.”

Raina Roy, a prominent transgender activist who has also spearheaded a lot of TG registrations for the community in Kolkata, emphasises the intersectional nature of this exclusion, "Trans intersectional trans persons face these intersectional issues, like trans Dalit girls. Caste, class, a lot of things. Grassroot trans people, like those who make beedis, who are in factories, who are in different other grassroot works, like unorganised sectors, like brick fields, in tea gardens." For a community already marginalised from formal economic and social structures, this represents a devastating blow to political representation.

The Stakes Beyond Electoral Rolls

The impact of SIR on transgender communities exposes fundamental contradictions in India's democratic project. As Moitryee pointedly asks, "Why then, after so many years, people, the ministry, parliament body, prime minister, why are they thinking now who are citizens and who are not? That means the failure of the government."

For transgender activists, SIR represents the latest iteration of a continuous struggle for recognition. "It's a constant cycle of proving, proving, proving," Raina observes. "Why should I prove in this country again that I am a citizen?"

The implications extend beyond electoral participation. Azar draws historical parallels that activists find increasingly relevant: "This is a beginning of marking the undesirables who shall be segregated."

Bengal's partial concessions, TG card acceptance, special enquiry mechanisms, and Guru-Ma registration have not addressed the structural violence embedded in SIR's assumptions. The process presumes stable addresses, consistent identity documentation, and family support, conditions that exist in direct contradiction to the lived realities of most transgender people.

Without fundamental redesign—including explicit transgender-specific provisions, accessible identity documentation systems, dedicated outreach, and genuine community consultation rather than top-down impositions—SIR threatens to formalise the political erasure of one of India's most vulnerable communities. As Sintu warns, "There is always a chance of not being in the register or documents or becoming invisible in the state’s eyes. This continues to be a big, big trouble for the transgender community."