Rajagopal says voter roll deletion blocked passport renewal in West Bengal

R. Rajagopal says West Bengal’s deletion of his name from the electoral rolls stopped his passport renewal, turning a personal paperwork dispute into a national test of civil rights and bureaucratic power. The former editor of The Telegraph, who served from 2016 to 2023, says the problem began during the state’s Special Intensive Revision of the voter list.

Rajagopal says officials could not trace his name, or his late father’s name, in electoral records dating back to 2002. He has described the situation as a state of civic uncertainty and said he has spent much of his time rebuilding family records and gathering documents from decades ago. The case has become a sharp example of how removal from the voter list can spill far beyond voting, affecting access to passports and other official papers that depend on the state’s paperwork trail.

The Editors Guild of India condemned what it called the denial of electoral and passport rights, and said the way Rajagopal was being treated raised deeper concerns about how the bureaucracy decides who is an Indian citizen and who is not. Opposition parties including Congress, Trinamool Congress and CPI(M) have also attacked the Centre over the incident, casting it as part of a broader erosion of citizen rights. Their criticism has helped push the case beyond a personal grievance and into the center of a fight over how administrative decisions are made and reviewed.

The dispute comes as West Bengal faces intense scrutiny over the Special Intensive Revision itself. Reports say more than 90 lakh voters were deleted from the rolls during the exercise, setting off legal and political challenges across the state. The Supreme Court added to that pressure on January 13, 2026, when it questioned the Election Commission’s authority to exclude voters on citizenship grounds before the Centre has taken a decision on citizenship status. That question now hangs over Rajagopal’s case, which has become a flashpoint for journalists, opposition parties and civil-rights advocates who see the issue as larger than one editor’s passport renewal.