ECI begins scrutiny of unmapped and doubtful voters in West Bengal

The second phase of West Bengal’s Special Intensive Revision begins Saturday with hearings on claims and objections to the draft voters’ list, focusing on unmapped and doubtful records, ahead of the final roll publication in February

Kolkata: With the conclusion of the first stage of the three-stage Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal, which was the enumeration phase, the second stage of the exercise will start on Saturday with the beginning of the hearing sessions on the claims and objections on the draft voters’ list in the state, which was published on December 16.

Each table of the hearing session will be conducted by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), who will be assisted by one Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO).

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The Election Commission of India (ECI) has appointed one micro-observer to oversee the hearing process at each table. In total, 4,600 micro-observers have been assigned by the ECI to supervise the hearing sessions. They are either direct central government employees or employees from central public sector undertakings or public sector banks, especially from the Group-B category and a few from the Group-A category.

The Commission had set a target for each ERO to complete hearings on 150 cases a day.

The last time the SIR was conducted in West Bengal was in 2002.

The initial stage of hearing sessions will be on the “unmapped” voters, not having any links with the 2002 voters’ list, be it through “self-mapping” or through “progeny mapping”. The number of such unmapped voters is around 30 lakhs.

In the next stage of the hearing, the doubtful cases with weird family-tree data have been detected by the Commission in the course of “progeny mapping”. The number of such doubtful cases is around 1.36 crore.

Some doubtful cases included voters who were 45 years old or older but were not listed in the 2002 voter registry, voters who became fathers at the age of 15 or younger, voters who became grandfathers at the age of 40 or younger, and voters whose fathers and mothers shared the same names.

The Commission has already taken several steps to ensure that forged identity documents cannot be passed one and cleared as genuine during the hearing sessions.

The Commission had also fixed the accountability of the EROs and the district magistrates, as well as the district electoral officers, on this count.

The draft voters’ list was published on December 16. The final voters’ list will be published on February 14 next year.

Soon after that, the ECI will announce the polling dates for the crucial Assembly elections in West Bengal, scheduled for next year.