The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise began in West Bengal on Tuesday, with the distribution of enumeration forms in various assembly constituencies (AC) across the state since morning, as part of 12 states and Union territories undergoing the electoral rejig. Booth Level Officers (BLO) were seen going door-to-door along with Booth Level Agents (BLA) from various political parties to identify voters in the area and hand over two sets of enumeration forms while explaining the process to voters.
“The process is good. If this takes the right course of direction in future, it is a good thing. I have no doubts. Everything is going fine," said 50-year-old Gurpreet Singh, who belongs to a family of eight, and his parents and children’s names are in the 2002 list too.
"There is no problem, the process has been explained to us. We will fill them up. Our names have been there in the voter list since 1972," said a confident 69-year-old Pradyudt Kumar Dutta of Bhawanipore Assembly Constituency in Kolkata.
“If this (SIR) happens, it will be good; else, people will come from here and there and cast votes on someone else’s name. This has happened to our known people. We citizens can hope these incidents will reduce," said 62-year-old Kaveri Dutta from Bhawanipore Assembly Constituency in Kolkata.
Meanwhile, in other districts, people seemed content with the doorstep process of BLOs distributing and explaining details to be filled in the form. “I have been explained the details of form filling and will fill and submit them. I had no difficulty in understanding anything," said Bikash Chandra Das of Chandrakona, West Midnapore district.
However, there are also reports of many voters being concerned, with information trickling in connecting it to the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Allegedly, there have been deaths and suicide attempts over fears of their names not being in the 2002 SIR list or not having relevant documents to prove their eligibility for inclusion in the revised voter list.
The SIR has been a bone of contention between political parties, primarily the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal. The other parties opposing the SIR are the Congress and CPI(M).
The BJP supports the EC’s decision to do a voter revision exercise to weed out non-eligible voters or illegal voters who have infiltrated into the country and not procured identity or Indian citizenship documents in an ethical manner. There has also been a controversial remark in the recent past by its Bongaon MP, Shantanu Thakur, saying that 1.2 crore illegal voters will be struck off the list after the SIR.
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For now, voters are to fill out these forms and keep them ready, after which BLOs or BLAs will collect these forms. In case, if a voter is unavailable at the time of the BLO's visit to collect the form, a BLA can collect 50 enumeration forms at a time and hand them over to the BLO.
There are 80,681 BLOs, 14,000 BLOs in reserve, and 659 help desks set up by the Election Commission. Steps are being taken by EC to remove confusion from the voter’s mind, with Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal holding meetings at the district level with District Electoral Officers (DEO) for a smooth process and District Magistrates (DM) to ensure security of BLOs.
18 lakh enumeration forms submitted on day 1 of SIR in West Bengal
BLOs across West Bengal, out since the morning on Thursday, distributed over 18 lakh enumeration forms as of 5pm. The Election Commission (EC) is confident that the voter updating process will be completed within a month across the 23 states of West Bengal. However, if a voter’s name is not in the 2002 SIR list or the 2025 voter list, the voter will not receive an enumeration form. West Bengal has a 7,66,37,529 or 7.6 crore electorate.
BLAs from various political parties were seen along with BLOs going door-to-door distributing two sets of enumeration forms while BLOs explained the process to voters. While these are level 1 BLAs, level 2 BLAs entail agents at polling booths to assist voters with the enumeration form filling, submission and documents as required by the EC for the SIR process. The aim is to clear doubts that voters may have and ensure all eligible voters make it to the final SIR list.
As per EC’s data, there are a total of 63,940 BLAs who have officially submitted their forms from various political parties, of which the break-up is as follows:
24858 - BJP
18706 - CPIM
1053 - Forward Bloc
13526 - Trinamool Congress
5797 - Indian National Congress
These numbers are likely to rise with more BLA requests expected in the following days. Currently, there are 1,200 voters per BLO. If the need arises, the voters per booth can be split further to simplify the SIR process. Hence, more BLAs will be instrumental in smoothening the process of voter outreach. As far as BLOs go, there are 80,681 persons, while 14,000 BLOs are in reserve.
The challenges during the SIR exercise are apprehensions of teachers who are Central and state government employees, doubling up as BLOs. As they have to be present from the morning for the SIR exercise, they fear being marked absent for a month instead of being marked on duty. This might deter the functioning of BLOs. The EC says the decision to mark them on or off duty does not lie with the EC, but with the Central or State government under whom these teachers are employed.
The online submission of enumeration forms is yet to begin as an additional facility for voters as the process is yet to be formulated by the EC. Using a microphone or miking system will happen in smaller areas within districts to spread information on the distribution and collection of enumeration forms. A central team from the Election Commission of India (ECI) will travel from Delhi to Kolkata and stay till November 8 including travelling to the districts of Coochbehar, Alipurduars and Jalpaiguri, which are bordering Bangladesh.