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In the border villages of Murshidabad district in West Bengal like Taranagar, the Podda nodi (Padma river) is both a giver of life and a "shorbonashi" (destroyer). Calm and satiated for most of the year, the mighty Padma swells up ever so often in wrathful hunger, gobbling up all that comes in its way, including lives and livelihoods.
"My house was right there. The river took it all," Taranagar resident Ayesha Bibi, 38, states, pointing toward the river.
In 2025, the Padma swelled up four times. And each time it did, it swallowed up chunks of the village, including the homes and belongings of nearly 150 families.
Now, with Murshidabad going to polls in the first phase of West Bengal Assembly elections on 23 April, many of Taranagar's residents like Ayesha are facing a new challenge. She, and at least 185 other voters of Taranagar, including many who lost their homes to the persistent Padma river erosion, have been deleted from the state's voter list following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
"We are already displaced and homeless. We have nothing to our name other than the tent we are living under," Ayesha, who now lives under a tarpaulin tent hut just metres away from where her pukka house once stood, tells The Quint.
"Now the government has taken away our vote, and with it, the last bit of dignity we had."
Displaced, Then Deleted
Taranagar is a small hamlet in the Lalgola Assembly constituency of Murshidabad, which borders the Padma river, and appears to be a stone's throw away from the Bangladesh border.
Since 1967, Taranagar has lost about 66,000 hectares of land to the river, as per a report by NASA's Earth Observatory. This includes most of the village's farm lands, and more recently, its playgrounds and common spaces.
Due to the lack of steady non-agricultural employment in these parts, most of the men in the village—belonging to marginalised Aljaf Muslim castes—are migrant workers who earn their living as 'Raj Mistry' (master carpenters) in other states. The women roll bidis, earning Rs 180-200 for a bundle of a thousand. Some who own land farm corn and cauliflowers.
"When a river shifts course, there are signs. The last time it changed course was in 1995, when the Farakka dam water was released into the Padma, changing the course of the river. That time too, some property was damaged," Mohd Zohirul Islam, a local teacher at the Sheikh Ali School, tells The Quint.
The school now functions as a makeshift home for several of the displaced families. Other families had been sheltering in the Taranagar school but had to vacate it for election purposes.
"This time, we started seeing the signs three years ago. We warned the local administration. Had action been taken on time, this kind of damage would not have happened."Mohd Zohirul Islam
Last year, the first swell came on Independence Day. A patch of homes were swept away, including that of Ayesha's. The river swelled again, twice, in September. On 10 October, a massive flash broke off a large chunk of the land, and parts of Ashanoor Bibi and her neighbour Najma Bibi's homes.
About a hundred families have been forced to leave the village since the swell.
Those who stayed on continue to live in their incomplete homes with broken roofs, their river-facing rooms, missing walls, and doors. Those who have retained their bathrooms or parts of it consider themselves lucky. Ayesha, for instance, has to use the open fields in the absence of a public toilet for women in the area.
As if their travails were not enough, on 28 February, Ayesha, Ashanoor, and Najma, whose names had been under adjudication, found that their names been deleted from the final list.
"We spent so much on getting our documents in order, went to all the hearings. Yet, we were deleted. My parents are on the 2002 voter list, the child I gave birth to is a voter, but I am deleted. Why?"Najma Bibi
They have applied online, but the date for the acceptance of appeals by the appellate tribunal is already over. None of the "deleted" voters of Taranagar have heard any word from the Election Commission of India or their local block level office. None of them is quite sure why their names were deleted. But they know one thing for sure.
"We have all been erased," she sighs.
Anger, Despair, and the Long Wait
In the hamlet, dissatisfaction against the ruling parties, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the state and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Cente, hung as heavy as the humid April air.
"Now that our names have not come up in the SIR, will we ever be rehabilitated? Or will they just discard us into Bangladesh," Najma asks while pointing across the river to the Bangladeshi shore.
According to locals, the state government has alloted land 'pattas' to the displaced families. "We have been given pattas, and we received a compensation amount as well. But most of us have not yet been able to go to the allotted land as the previous occupants refuse to move," Ashanoor states.
In many cases, the plots alloted—which in no way match the size of the land the families lost to the erosion—were in inaccessible locations or located in troubled areas.
"Some plots look like they were ditches that have dried up... they are caved in and haven't yet been filled up. When it rains, those lands are likely to flood. It's like they picked the families up from the river and threw them into the pond," Mohd Masood, a local activist associated with the Porijayi Shramik Aikyo Mancha, an NGO that works for migrant workers, tells The Quint.
He alleges that the TMC government has turned a blind eye to the situation, and even during elections, the issue of river erosion is not a poll issue. "All everyone can think about is the SIR. Because of the unneccesary chaos it has created, all real issues that the people face through the year have been eclipsed," he adds.
Locals also alleged that the government had promised to take steps to protect the land from further erosion, but has failed to do so.
Imran Ali, an MA graduate from Calcutta University who lives nearby, shows The Quint how the government has been using bags of sand and bamboo cages filled with rocks tied up in a net to prevent the soil from breaking away.
"The river swallows houses several stories high when it swells. Will these sand bags and boulder boxes stand a chance? Why can't they create concrete boulders like they have done in Digha?" he asks.
"This village is on the border with Bangladesh. It isn't just a question of our lives but a matter of national security. But neither Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee care for this village. Maybe because it's a minority area? I can't say..." Imran alleged.
Both Muslim and Hindu voters of Taranagar The Quint spoke with agreed that mostly the Muslim names under adjudication have been deleted from the final voter list. Locals also believe the deletions are higher among women due to the change in their maiden surnames after marriage.
Doubly Marginalised
On 19 April, as a massive kaal baishakhi (storm) tore through parts of Murshidabad, Taranagar residents were yet again faced with the spectre of their homelessness. Water sprayed through the patchwork roofs, and turned the muddy tracks leading to the tents and remaining homes into sludge.
Explaining the difficulties they face in living in with such dire conditions, the elderly Mustana Bibi who lives in the tent adjoining Ayesha's narrates:
"The winds and rain were so strong, the tin on the roof of our tent fell right on top of my back. I have been unable to move since then."
Mustana still has her vote. She asserts that this time, she will vote for change, alluding to the Congress. "It is a matter of life and death now. We need someone to help us," she said.
In fact, in some seats in Murshidabad like Lalgola, the Congress has seen a quiet resurgence this year with Muslim voters unlikely to vote for the BJP, and Mamata Banerjee experiencing a degree of anti-incumbency (many blame her for not being able to prevent the SIR chaos).
Speaking to The Quint, the Congress's Lalgola candidate Tohidoor Rahaman Suman said the river erosion issue is of utmost importance in Lalgola, but the TMC has ignored it.
"Despite all the money being sanctioned in the name of saving the region, the result is for all to see. No embankment has been made, people have not received or been even allotted lands. Even for the land allotment, I hear that locals had to pay 'cut money' to ruling party members to faciliate the work. This kind of attitude of the government towards a marginalised people speaks of political indifference," Suman, a local young Turk popular for his 'clean image and ground connect', said.
Suman, nevertheless, is facing off with the TMC's Abdul Razzak, son-in-law of former TMC leader Enamul Haque.
The latter has been accused of running the inter-border cow smuggling business from these parts and has the reputation of a being a local "Robinhood" bahubali, one that locals both rever and fear.
In his campaign speeches, Razzak, too, has been raising the issue of river erosion. However, for the deleted voters of Taranagar, such speeches hold little meaning now, especially for the 186 "deleted" persons.
"Since the polls are near, we had some visits by politicians assuring us improvement. Once the elections are over, we will be forgotten again," Najma's mother-in-law Jahanara Bibi, who has lived in the village for over 50 years, says.
She has seen the wrath of Padma before in 1995. But she feels this time, it is worse as it is not just the river out to get them.
"Our life now hangs in a delicate balance between a hostile river that wants to swallow us, and a hostile government that wants us swallowed," she sighs.
Behind her, the Podda flows on.