Kolkata, February 7: The deadline for hearing claims and objections related to the Special Inquiry Report (SIR) in West Bengal is set to expire on Saturday. There are indications that an extension of two additional days may be granted for approximately 15 assembly seats to complete this process.
According to reports, these 15 assembly constituencies are primarily located in three electoral districts: the minority-dominated Malda district, the coastal South 24 Parganas, and North Kolkata. A request for an extension has been made due to the incomplete hearing process in these regions.
Sources reveal that the District Election Officers (DEOs) of the concerned districts have formally requested the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal, Manoj Kumar Agrawal, to extend the deadline. Based on the progress made by Saturday, the CEO will forward his recommendations to the Election Commission of India (ECI) headquarters in New Delhi. This will determine which assembly constituencies will receive additional time and how much.
As of Friday evening, over 400,000 voters have been identified who did not participate in the hearings regarding claims and objections on the draft electoral roll. Despite multiple notices sent to them, these voters failed to appear.
Approximately 400,000 of these voters are at risk of being removed from the final list. Among them, around 50,000 are classified as ‘unmapped’ voters, while about 350,000 cases are related to ‘logical discrepancies’.
Unmapped voters are those who could not establish a connection through either ‘self-mapping’ or ‘progeny mapping’ from the 2002 electoral list. In cases of logical discrepancies, unusual or suspicious information was found in family details.
It is noteworthy that when the draft electoral list was released in December, the names of 5,820,899 voters were removed, identified as deceased, relocated, or duplicate voters. The total number of removed voters will be clarified after the final electoral list is published on February 14.
Following the release of the final list, the full bench of the Election Commission will visit West Bengal to assess the situation. Subsequently, the dates for the assembly elections will be announced.
Meanwhile, an important hearing regarding the SIR is scheduled for Monday before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court. It is expected that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will once again present her case, as she did on February 4.