KOLKATA: Besides more than 32 lakh 'unmapped' voters in West Bengal, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has decided to issue notices to another one crore electors, asking them to appear at various centres for hearings as part of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state.
According to sources in the ECI, these one crore voters are being called for hearings after several “logical discrepancies” related to their names and other details were found in the draft electoral rolls following the first phase of the SIR process.
The ECI on Monday held a meeting with West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal and other officials, and directed them to serve notices to the one crore voters by this week, sources said.
The national poll body has also asked Agarwal to sensitise the matter through district magistrates (DMs), who also serve as district electoral officers (DEOs) across the state, and to begin the process of serving notices. DEOs have been directed to submit reports to the CEO’s office on how many voters were issued notices citing “logical discrepancies” starting Tuesday.
Sources in the CEO’s office said, “Logical discrepancies relate to different types of confusing details like abnormal differences of ages between a voter and his/her father or grandfather, gender mismatch found in electoral rolls. As the assembly elections are nearing in West Bengal the national poll body wants to get the issue flawless.”
The number of voters marked under the “logical discrepancies” category has now come down to around one crore from an earlier figure of 1.36 crore following the SIR exercise.
The Commission has already directed DEOs in West Bengal not to issue notices for hearings to voters identified as “unmapped”.
More than 32 lakh voters who could not trace themselves, their parents, or grandparents in the electoral rolls during the last SIR conducted in 2002 in Bengal have already been asked to appear for hearings, which began on December 27.
The national poll body has paused hearings only for voters who were not found by its central software system but were present in the hard copies of the 2002 electoral rolls. This pause does not apply to “unmapped” cases flagged by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) after on-ground verification.
According to sources in the CEO’s office, “Though hearing notices may have been generated from the central software system for such cases, these electors should not be called for hearing, or hearing notices so generated need not be served, and instead be kept with the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO)/Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO).”
Officials explained that when poll authorities working on the ground checked the hard copies of the 2002 rolls, they noticed that voters or their children shown as “unmapped” on the EC’s software were, in fact, present.
