Kolkata: The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal has so far thrown up over 46 lakh names flagged for deletion from the voters’ list, based on trends emerging from the digitisation of enumeration forms. As of Tuesday evening, the number of electors identified for exclusion stood at around 46.30 lakh, up from 43.50 lakh just 24 hours earlier, indicating that about 2.70 lakh additional names were marked in a single day.
Officials linked to the office of the Chief Electoral Officer said that of the roughly 46.20 lakh names flagged till Tuesday, about 22.28 lakh fall under the “deceased voters” category. Another 6.40 lakh have been tagged as “untraceable”, where booth-level officers were unable to locate voters or deliver forms despite repeated visits, while about 16.22 lakh are classified as “shifted voters” who have permanently moved out for reasons such as marriage or employment. Around 1.05 lakh entries have been identified as “duplicate” voters, reflecting cases of enrolment in more than one place.
The current electoral roll for West Bengal, as on October 27, lists 7,66,37,529 voters. Alongside the large-scale clean-up, the Election Commission has also focused on polling booths previously reported as having no deceased, shifted or duplicate voters. On Monday, 2,208 such booths were flagged, prompting the Commission to seek explanations from the respective District Magistrates after finding the figures implausible.
Following the Commission’s query, District Magistrates submitted revised reports on Tuesday, sharply reducing the count of booths with no deceased, shifted or duplicate voters to 480. The recalibration has further underlined the intensity of the SIR exercise, which aims to remove ineligible names while ensuring the rolls are accurate ahead of future elections.
(Inputs from IANS)