The Election Commission has directed to stop personal hearings for those voters in West Bengal who were marked as “unmapped” during the ongoing special intensive revision of electoral rolls, but whose names or ancestral connections were present in the 2002 voter list, reported The Hindu on Sunday.
The direction was issued on Saturday as the state authorities found upon verification with the 2002 rolls that several voters or their children who were shown as “unmapped” on the poll panel’s central software were present in the area, The Indian Express quoted state officials as saying.
The state’s draft electoral rolls were published on December 16. It showed that more than 58 lakh voters were removed after being marked dead, shifted or absent. In addition, 31 lakh voters were “unmapped”, or not found on the 2002 rolls, when the last special intensive revision was held.
In a letter to district election officers, the West Bengal additional chief electoral officer said that several voters were marked “unmapped” as the 2002 electoral roll data had not been fully converted to plain text format, reported Hindustan Times.
Due to this, “linkage could not be fetched in BLO [booth-level officer] app in respect of many electors”, said the additional chief electoral officer.
The letter added that the state chief electoral officer had requested the poll panel to allow booth-level officers, electoral registration officers and additional electoral registration officers to upload the relevant portions of the 2002 voter roll’s hard copy directly for mapping the voters.
After the draft rolls were published, the poll panel generated notices for the unmapped electors to prove their eligibility through personal hearings.
The state additional chief electoral officer wrote in the letter that despite the notices, “these electors may not be called for hearing”.
Instead, the notices can be kept with the electoral registration officer or assistant electoral registration officer, reported The Hindu.
“BLOs may be sent to the field [to] take a photo with such elector and the same may be uploaded,” the newspaper quoted the letter as saying.
It added: “In cases where discrepancies are detected later on with the hard copy of 2002 Electoral Roll by ERO/AERO or on complaints, the concerned electors may be called for hearing after servicing notices.”
This came on the same day that the West Bengal Civil Service Executive Officers’ Association expressed objections to what it described as “suo motu system-driven deletion” of voters from the draft electoral rolls.
The association argued that such deletion of a large number of electors at one time appeared to infringe on the rights of voters who might otherwise be eligible but were unable to participate in the enumeration process.
West Bengal is expected to head for Assembly elections in the first half of 2026.
Besides West Bengal, the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 11 other states and Union Territories.
In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll published on September 30.
Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.
Also read: I struggled to fill SIR forms. BLOs have it much worse
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