Ushering in the New Year may not be as pleasant for some voters in West Bengal with more than 10 lakh hearing notices being issued and 22 lakh more remaining in the second phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
Out of the 7.66 crore electorate, 7.08 crore voters have been included in the SIR draft list released on December 16. Around 32 lakh voters, who will now get hearing notices, will have to produce one of the 11 relevant identity documents to prove their citizenship status or progeny links to the 2002 SIR list. Around 58 lakh names have been left out of the draft voter list.
Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders led by minister Chandrima Bhattacharjee met West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal on Tuesday to address issues related to voter names left out of the draft voter list. “Problems of the common man have to be solved. Mere lip service will not help. Instructions need to be given to solve these,” said Chandrima Bhattacharjee.
Concerns of TMC include:
1. Voters with logical discrepancies like spelling mistakes on enumeration forms should not get notices.
2. If progeny links to the 2002 SIR list have been accepted by the EC, why should voters furnish progeny related documents?
3. If 11 documents are accepted by EC, why should Aadhar card not be accepted the 12th document it was accepted during the Bihar SIR exercise as per Supreme Court(SC) instructions? TMC says all the 11 documents are proof of identity and not citizenship.
4. Hearing centres are 30-40km away in villages which is impractical for people and instead should be conducted in government offices like gram panchayats, municipalities and borough offices which are closer for people.
5. Election Commission (EC) says door-to-door voting will be conducted for senior citizens, but there are no specific instructions as yet. Also, many who are not 65 years old but are unable to move due to health reasons. Why is EC not treating everyone as senior citizens and keeping hearing centres close by for their benefit?
6. District officials and BLOs have to conduct verifications, which creates undue additional pressure on BLOs, while senior officials are not taking the onus.
7. Guardians of overseas voters have filled the enumeration forms on the latter’s behalf. How can those living overseas come for the hearing suddenly? In that case those guardians should be allowed to go for hearing with clear Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) in place.
8. How did EC decide that Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) pre-election baseline survey should be conducted in 81 out of 294 assembly constituencies by a private agency? Why are these constituencies being singled out?
9. Public should not be harassed. Who will provide money for voters to travel long distances to hearing locations? We will take stricter measures if people are harassed.
10. Many voters who are alive have been mapped as dead in the draft SIR list which is derogatory.
11. Voters who have not shifted constituencies but have been marked as shifted.
12. SOPs for migrants workers in other states who are unable to come for hearing and risk losing their daily livelihood
13. List of new voters filling up form 6, 7 and 8 should be revealed
At least 1.36 crore enumeration forms have discrepancies with spelling mistakes of their progeny links or their own names, which can be corrected with the help of Booth Level Officers (BLO). Hearing will take place in District Magistrates (DM), Block Development Office (BDO), Sub-Divisional Office (SDO), government schools and colleges. However, exam schedules of students will not be affected.
Officials including Electoral Registration Officers (ERO) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AERO) are being trained for the hearing while micro observers will also be present during these sessions. New voters are also submitting their forms which the EC is also working to include in the final voter list before the 2026 Assembly elections. The second phase of SIR has to conclude before February 2026 when the final SIR list will be published.