India, April 8 -- The outcome of the adjudication process of the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in West Bengal - 45% of the 6 million voters subjected to the process were found ineligible - raises several questions. The most pertinent one concerns the disproportionate number of Muslims who lost their vote - a Constitutionally-granted universal privilege that infused India's democracy with rare inclusiveness (few democracies allowed universal franchise from their inception). The first phase of SIR, carried out across several states - it will be extended to more eventually - was mostly about removing discrepancies in a very old, and clunky, database. The HT newsroom's data journalists found no correlation to suggest the exercise benefited a particular political dispensation in Bihar, the first state where SIR was carried out, and also the only state for which disaggregated data on exclusions at the assembly constituency level were available. And across all the states where SIR was carried out, the strong correlation between deletions and urban population suggested that migrant workers (including white-collar ones) were mostly picking their place of birth over their place of work. Expectedly, in terms of deletions (expressed as a proportion of the number of people on the rolls pre-SIR), West Bengal figured in the middle of the pack among states where the exercise was carried out. But that was before the thus-far, unique-to-West Bengal adjudication process. The deletions in the first phase were mostly of ghost voters (including those registered in multiple places), which explains why the deletion of a large share of voters - in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, this was around 19% of the pre-SIR roll - did not see people taking to the streets. The deletions in the second phase in West Bengal, are mostly of people who voted in the previous general and assembly election. Data released by the Election Commission on the adjudication process, along with an analysis by HT's data journalists, shows a significant correlation between the deletions and districts with a high proportion of Muslims in the population. And the new deletions in the state also weaken the correlation between deletions and urban population, suggesting that the deletions are not as much a function of migration in this phase. In any state, this data is bound to raise questions about how the process was carried out. In West Bengal's highly polarised political environment, it will also raise questions about motives and institutional propriety....