KOLKATA: The 50-day-long hearings in connection with the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal ended on Saturday with the deletion of the names of 6.61 lakh more voters from the list during a process that was kickstarted on December 27.
According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the names of 4.98 lakh voters were removed from the rolls during the hearings, conducted by the ECI across the state, because they did not appear at the hearing centres though they were served notices by the Commission.
The remaining 1.63 lakh voters were deleted from the rolls after they were identified as ineligible, ECI sources said.
“The SIR exercise, including distribution and collection of enumeration forms, and hearings, in our state is the best compared to other states in the country,” said Manoj Agarwal, West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), claimed while speaking to reporters today.
“We have got active cooperation from the state government, its employees, Booth Level Officers (BLOs), district administrations, officials and staff of the Commission, special roll observers, common people and all political parties to make the exercise successful,” Agarwal said.
The office of the CEO said that 1.52 crore voters, including 1.20 crore belong to the logical discrepancy category, were issued notices by the Commission to appear before different SIR hearing centres in the state since 27 December. The remaining 32 lakh voters summoned for hearings belong to the unmapped group, according to the CEO office.
It also said that the 6.61 lakh votes whose names have been removed during the SIR hearings can also submit Form-6 seeking inclusion of their names in the voter list again.
It may be recalled that the names of 58 lakh dead, permanently shifted and bogus voters had already been deleted from the draft electoral rolls in the state. In total, around 64.81 lakh out 7.66 crore voters in the state have been deleted from the rolls at a time when the verification of names of another 65 lakh voters is still on, said sources in the CEO office.
The verification process of the voters who have been issued summons for hearings will be continued till 21 February.
Poll analysts felt that the names of a sizable number of voters from the pool of 65 lakh are likely to be deleted by the time the final rolls are released on 28 February.