Bengal SIR: Hearing deadline expiring today, around 15 constituencies might be allowed extension

Kolkata: The deadline for hearings on claims and objections on the draft voters’ list in West Bengal is expiring on Saturday, with possibilities being high that around 15 Assembly constituencies might be allowed extension for a couple of days to complete that process. These 15 Assembly constituencies are concentrated mainly in three electoral districts of minority-dominated Malda, coast bordering South 24 Parganas, and Kolkata (Uttar).

The District Electoral Officers (DEOs) concerned have already dropped formal requests for extensions of hearing deadlines to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, Manoj Kumar Agarwal. Depending on the progress in the matter till Saturday, the CEO will send a recommendation to the Election Commission of India (ECI)’s headquarters in New Delhi for deadline extensions for these Assembly constituencies under these three electoral districts, an insider from the CEO’s office said.

Till Friday evening, over 4,00,000 additional voters have been identified as eligible for deletion from the final voters’ list because they failed to turn up for the hearing sessions on claims and objections on the draft voters’ list despite being served with subsequent notices for appearance.

Out of these, 4,00,000 voters are heading for imminent deletion, 50,000 are “unmapped” voters, and around 3,50,000 are “logical discrepancy” cases. Unmapped voters are those who were unable to establish any link with the 2002 voters’ list either through “self-mapping” or “progeny mapping”. On the other hand, “logical discrepancy” cases are those in which unusual family-tree data were detected during “progeny” mapping.

When the draft voters’ list was published in December last year, 58,20,899 voters were deleted after being identified as deceased, shifted, or duplicate voters. With the publication of the final voters’ list on February 14, the final number of deletions will become clear. After the publication, the full Bench of the ECI will visit West Bengal to assess the situation.

The Commission will then announce the polling dates for the Assembly elections scheduled later this year. A crucial hearing on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is scheduled at a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court on Monday. West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, might again argue the matter in front of the Bench as she had done on February 4.