Facing complaints over the voter list of West Bengal released by it on the basis of a 2002 Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, the Election Commission may issue a fresh one. Sources said the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal has written to the EC seeking permission to tally the list with the one released in 2003, to put out a final one.
The release of the 2002 SIR data for West Bengal — which was done district-wise, between end July and last week — has caused a stir in the state. With Bengal headed for polls early next year, and given the controversies surrounding the ongoing Bihar SIR, the Bengal exercise was slammed by the Opposition.
The 2002 SIR put the total number of voters in West Bengal at 4.58 crore, spread over 80,000 polling booths. Sources said that in the 2002 exercise, 28 lakh names had been deleted from the electoral rolls.
A senior official at the CEO office said: “We published the SIR data exactly as we got from the archives. But there have been several complaints since then, from voters as well as political parties.”
For example, the voter list for one constituency, Kulpi Assembly seat in South 24 Parganas district, was found missing. The official admitted they did not have data for “a single booth in the constituency”.
Besides, voter lists of 100 booths in Gaighata Assembly constituency and several in South 24 Parganas, Birbhum and Howrah districts, were found missing.
The official said: “In more than a thousand polling booths, we found voter lists but the polling centre name was missing. In many cases, the booth names were not correct or had been changed, leaving voters struggling to find their names in the 2002 list… The problem was compounded as, after the 2009 delimitation, many Assembly constituencies have changed and the number of booths increased.”
Going by the Bihar example, presence in the 2002 list may be enough to prove eligibility as a voter in any new SIR drive in Bengal.
The official said: “Given the situation, we have asked the EC for permission to publish the rolls of 2003, prepared on the basis of the 2002 SIR. Tallying these two electoral rolls, we will publish a fresh electoral roll (as the reference point) for all districts.”
The official added that due to this, the process for a new SIR in Bengal may be delayed. Earlier, sources in the West Bengal CEO’s office had indicated they were prepared to conduct the exercise as early as the end of this month.
West Bengal CEO Manoj Agarwal announced the start of training of Booth Level Officers last month, including for an SIR. The EC also revised the remuneration for BLOs and BLO supervisors in the state.
TMC MP Ritabrata Banerjee said: “The SIR is basically ‘Scientific Invisible Rigging’. Our party leader Abhishek Banerjee has already spoken about how the EC is working as a tool of the BJP. They are trying to rig the voting in Bihar and then Bengal… The SIR can’t be done in a hurry… or such mistakes will happen.”
CPI(M) Central Committee member Sujan Chakraborty said, “The EC has been wrong from the start. They are just working as agents of the BJP.”
