The hearing process on claims and objections to the draft electoral roll in West Bengal concluded on Saturday evening, with 4.98 lakh more names marked for deletion from the final voters’ list.
These are voters who failed to appear at the hearings despite being served repeated notices and have consequently been deemed eligible for removal. Until Friday evening, the number of such absentees stood at 6.25 lakh. “On the final day, more than one lakh voters turned up for the hearings, bringing the figure down to 4.98 lakh by Saturday evening,” a source in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said.
The latest deletions come in addition to over 58 lakh names — including those of deceased, duplicate and shifted voters — that were excluded during the earlier enumeration exercise. Those names were removed from the draft roll published in December last year. The 4.98 lakh identified during the hearing stage will be added to that tally.
However, officials indicated that the final number of deletions will only be known after the publication of the revised electoral roll on February 28. Scrutiny of identity documents submitted by voters who attended the hearings will continue until February 21. Names backed by invalid or unverified documents could also face exclusion, the CEO’s office said.
District-wise data show that North 24 Parganas district recorded the highest number of absentees at around 1.38 lakh. It was followed by South 24 Parganas district with about 46,000 and the Kolkata Dakshin electoral district with nearly 22,000. Kalimpong district reported the lowest figure, at 440.
A full bench of the Election Commission of India is scheduled to visit the state for two days beginning March 1, a day after the final roll is published, to assess the post-Special Intensive Revision scenario. The poll panel is expected to announce the schedule for the Assembly elections due later this year after the review.
Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal has recommended that the Assembly polls be conducted in a single phase, though the final decision rests with the Commission. In recent years, Assembly elections in the state have been held in multiple phases, typically seven or eight. The last single-phase Assembly election in West Bengal took place in 2001.
