As hearing deadline nears, ECI seeks extension in 15 Bengal seats

With the window for disposing of claims and objections to West Bengal’s draft electoral rolls closing on Saturday, election officials are weighing short extensions in about 15 Assembly constituencies where the process is yet to be wrapped up.

These constituencies are largely spread across three election districts—minority-dominated Malda, coastal South 24-Parganas, and Kolkata (North).

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Officials said the District Electoral Officers (DEOs) from these areas have already moved formal proposals seeking additional time, placing their requests before Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal.

A senior official in the CEO’s office indicated that the final call would depend on the pace of hearings till Saturday.

Based on the ground situation, the CEO is expected to forward his recommendation to the Election Commission of India (ECI) in New Delhi for approving brief extensions, possibly for a couple of days.

Meanwhile, the revision exercise has flagged a substantial number of voters for removal.

By Friday evening, more than four lakh names had been marked for deletion from the final electoral roll after the individuals concerned failed to appear before hearing officers despite repeated notices.

Officials said around 50,000 of these fell under the category of “unmapped” voters, those who could not establish any verifiable connection with the 2002 voters’ list through either self-mapping or progeny-based mapping.

Another nearly 3.5 lakh cases involve “logical discrepancies”, where inconsistencies were detected in family linkage data during the progeny-mapping process.

The ongoing scrutiny follows the publication of the draft rolls in December, when as many as 58.2 lakh names were struck off after being identified as belonging to deceased persons, shifted voters, or duplicate entries.

The exact scale of deletions will be known once the final electoral rolls are released on 14 February.

After the final list is published, a full Bench of the Election Commission of India is slated to visit West Bengal to review the situation on the ground.

Poll dates for the Assembly elections, due later this year, are expected to be announced thereafter.

Separately, the controversy surrounding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is set to come up before a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court on Monday.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to again present her arguments, as she did during the previous hearing on 4 February.