KOLKATA: Born into loss in Kerala, raised without memory of parents, and finding a home after decades of drift, 50-year-old Benjamin – known as Benji in Kolkata's Beleghata – says the state has made him an orphan again. The Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has struck off his name, snapping his only formal identity link as a voter.
A Life of Drift and Discovery
An orphan since infancy, Benji lost his mother at birth and his father soon after. After time in a Kerala orphanage, he ran away, joined a circus troupe, and at 21 was brought to Kolkata as a shop help. Months later, he was taken in by Jayanta Baral, who ran a fast-food stall. Since 1999, Benji has lived with the Baral family, calling octogenarian Padmarani Baral his mother.
Fragile Recognition Collapses
The arrangement gave him stability and eventually citizenship on paper. After years of persuasion, he applied for a voter ID before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and voted. He also holds a ration card. That fragile recognition collapsed during SIR. In his enumeration form, Benji again named Padmarani as guardian. This time, officials did not accept the relationship. With no records of biological parents – names he cannot recall – his case stalled at a hearing and his name was deleted.
Meant to cleanse rolls, the exercise has left edge cases like his stranded between identity and proof, where lived family does not meet documentary thresholds. At the stall where he has worked for decades, regulars say paperwork has trumped presence.
Benji is now searching for a way back onto the rolls – through papers, affidavits and appeals – trying to prove he exists. "In my lonely life, I felt important for the first time during the 2024 LS election," he said. "After that, losing the right hurts more."
