What happened
A June 4 order from West Bengal's Food and Supplies Department directs that any ration card belonging to a person removed from the electoral rolls as 'absent,' 'shifted,' 'duplicate,' or 'dead' during the ongoing SIR be marked inactive. The SIR itself has already deleted nearly 90 lakh names statewide amid allegations of arbitrary and disproportionate exclusions of the poor, women, and Muslims — accusations serious enough that roughly 2.3 million people currently have formal appeals pending in special tribunals, and continue receiving benefits only until those appeals are decided. Everyone else just loses access to subsidised food on the strength of the same voter list the state's own adjudication process hasn't finished checking. An agricultural workers' union has taken the government to the Supreme Court, arguing there is no legal basis for tying a family's next meal to a voter-roll technicality.