Kolkata: The Election Commission (EC) said on Wednesday that around one million hearings for the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal are pending and that the process is likely to be completed within the deadline of February 7.
Earlier in the day, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the state had stated that nearly 6.3 million hearings were pending in West Bengal and that it was almost impossible to complete the process in the next four days.
“The total number of voters who have been called for hearings in the state is around 15 million. This includes unmapped voters and those with logical discrepancies. Only around one million hearings were pending till Wednesday,” West Bengal’s chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal said.
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“The hearing process is expected to be completed by Saturday,” an EC official said.
SIR was rolled out in the state on November 4, while around 5.8 million names of absent, shifted, dead, and duplicate voters were deleted in the draft roll, which was published on December 16. Notices were sent to around 3.2 million voters who could be linked with the electoral roll of 2002 when the last SIR was held in the state. Notices were also sent to another 13.6 million voters who had logical discrepancies in their enumeration forms.
“Although 88 lakh hearings have taken place since December 16, at the rate of around 1.8 lakh hearings per day, nearly 6.3 million hearings remain pending, necessitating an impossible pace of 1.5 million hearings daily,” the TMC statement said.
The deadline for the hearing process is February 7, while the final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on February 14.
Assembly elections are due in the state this year, and top leaders of the TMC and the BJP have said on multiple occasions in the past that the ECI is likely to announce the poll dates in February. Elections are likely to be held in April.
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Meanwhile, in another development, the EC rejected the West Bengal government’s request to exempt some senior IAS and IPS officers in the state, who have been named by the poll panel to be appointed as observers in other states where assembly elections are due this year.
The list of IAS officers includes the names of Jagdish Prasad Meena, state home secretary, and a few other secretaries and heads of various departments of the state government, such as Minority Affairs and Madrasah Education, Program Monitoring, Transport, Backward Classes Welfare, and Panchayat and Rural Development, among others.
A TMC delegation met Agarwal in the latter’s office in Kolkata on Wednesday afternoon.
“Apart from the 15 million unmapped voters and voters with logical discrepancies who are being called for hearing, another 50 million voters’ documents are being reverified. What is the objective? These are being done by micro-observers who have been appointed. This can’t go on,” state minister Shashi Panja, a member of the TMC delegation, said.
