Kolkata, 07 February (H.S.) :

The deadline for hearings on claims and objections under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in West Bengal is set to expire on Saturday. However, there is a strong possibility that around 15 Assembly constituencies may be granted a two-day extension to complete the process.

According to sources, these 15 Assembly segments are mainly located in three electoral districts—minority-dominated Malda, coastal South 24 Parganas, and Kolkata North. District Election Officers from the concerned districts have already sent formal requests seeking an extension to the state’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Manoj Kumar Agarwal.

An official from the CEO’s office said that based on the progress recorded till Saturday, a recommendation for extending the deadline for these constituencies will be forwarded to the Election Commission of India (ECI) headquarters in New Delhi.

As of Friday evening, more than 400,000 voters have been identified for deletion from the final electoral roll due to non-appearance at the hearings. Notices had been issued to these voters, but they failed to attend the scheduled hearings.

Of these cases, around 50,000 are classified as “unmapped voters,” while nearly 350,000 relate to logical inconsistencies. Unmapped voters are those who failed to establish their linkage through self-mapping or ancestral mapping with the 2002 electoral rolls. Cases involving logical inconsistencies pertain to anomalies found in family-related data during the process of ancestral mapping.

It may be recalled that when the draft electoral roll was published in December, as many as 5,820,899 names were deleted on grounds such as death, migration, or duplication. The final figure of deletions will become clear only after the publication of the final electoral roll on February 14.

Following the release of the final list, the full bench of the Election Commission of India is expected to visit West Bengal to review the situation. Only after this assessment will the polling dates for the Assembly elections scheduled later this year be announced.

Meanwhile, an important hearing related to the Special Intensive Revision is slated to take place on Monday before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is also likely to present her arguments before the court once again in connection with the matter.

Hindusthan Samachar / Satya Prakash Singh