Kolkata: Names of voters in several Assembly segments in and around Kolkata are not matching entries in the 2002 electoral roll, officials from the office of Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal have said.
Digitisation of enumeration forms collected during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is in progress, and so far about 26 lakh electors have been found whose names or parents’ names do not tally with the 2002 list.
The mismatch figure exceeds 30,000 in constituencies such as Kolkata Port, Kasba, Sonarpur (Dakshin), Sonarpur (Uttar), Behala (Purba), Behala (Pashchim), Rajarhat-New Town and Rajarhat Gopalpur, spread across Kolkata, North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas, with high numbers also reported from West Burdwan and the border districts of Nadia and Murshidabad.
West Bengal currently has 7,66,37,529 registered electors, and digitisation of five crore forms submitted by Booth Level Officers has been completed, with the full picture expected to emerge on December 9 when the draft rolls are published. Under SIR norms, those who, or whose parents, figure in the 2002 rolls will be treated as valid voters, while others must furnish any one of 11 Election Commission–approved identity documents.
Following a Supreme Court order, Aadhaar has been added as a 12th document, but applicants using it must still provide one additional ID from the original list of 11. The SIR in West Bengal began on November 4 and is scheduled to continue till the end of March next year, the first such exercise in the state since 2002.
(Inputs from IANS)