Bengal SIR: Hearing phase to be completed today, 6.25 lakh additional names identified for deletion

Kolkata, Feb 14
The phase of hearings on claims and objections to the draft voters' list in West Bengal is expiring at 12 midnight on Sunday, with 6.25 lakh additional names already being identified as eligible for exclusion in the final voters' list, officials said on Saturday.

Since the phase of scrutinising the documents submitted at the hearing session will continue for seven more days, until February 21, the number of additional names found suitable for exclusion in the final voters' list will automatically increase.

Already, during the enumeration phase, names of around more than 58 lakh voters (deceased voters, duplicated voters, and shifted voters) were found suitable for exclusion and hence their names were not included in the draft voters' list, which was published in December last year.

Now the final deletion figure will be clear only after the final voters' list is published on February 28.

The initial date of publication of the final voters' list was February 14, which was later extended to February 28.

Insiders from the office of the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) said that, out of the 6.25 lakh additional names found suitable for exclusion during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) hearing session, the majority are those voters who failed to turn up at the hearing sessions, despite repeated notices being sent to them.

"Such voters, who did not turn up at the hearing sessions, were both from 'unmapped' and 'logical discrepancy' categories," the CEO's office insider added.

"Unmapped" voters are those who failed to establish any link with the 2002 voters' list in West Bengal, be it through "self-mapping" or through "progeny mapping".

On the other hand, "logical discrepancy" cases are those where weird family-tree data were detected in the course of the "progeny mapping".

A day after the publication of the final voters' list on February 28, the full bench of the Election Commission of India (ECI) will be coming for a two-day visit to West Bengal to review the post-SIR scenario, following which the polling dates for the crucial Assembly elections in the state scheduled later this year will be announced.

West Bengal CEO, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, had already sent a recommendation to the ECI for a single-phase poll in the state this time, while saying that the final decision in the matter will be taken by the Commission.

The past few elections in West Bengal were conducted in seven to eight phases.

The last time there was a single-phase election in West Bengal was during the 2001 state Assembly elections.