12 lakh Bengal voter claims rejected out of 32L vetted, says EC official

By-kaushik.pradhan


KOLKATA: Bengal's list of ineligible voters swelled by about 12 lakh after judicial officers racing the poll clock to complete the contentious post-SIR adjudication process cleared just over half of the 60 lakh pending cases till Tuesday evening, an Election Commission official said on Wednesday.

With around 40% of 32 lakh people in "logical discrepancy" and "unmapped" categories not making the cut, anxiety escalated over whether the remaining 28 lakh cases will buck the trend.




The first supplementary list, published close to midnight Monday, added about 10 lakh names to the electorate, taking the count to 6.5 crore voters. Bengal had 7.6 crore voters before the SIR exercise began.

Draft rolls in Dec excluded 58 lakh "absent, shifted, dead or duplicate" voters. Final rolls published on Feb 28 dropped another 5.5 lakh voters and placed 60 lakh under adjudication, bringing the count down to 6.4 crore.

"Judicial officers had disposed of about 29 lakh cases till Monday but we received only 10 lakh names with digital signatures. These are part of the first supplementary list," the EC official said.

EC is scheduled to release the second and third supplementary lists on March 27 and April 3. "HC will send names with e-signatures post-5pm on March 27. Thereafter, 4-6 hours are required to publish the list," the official added.

EC wrote to the HC on Wednesday, requesting that it be allowed to add names to the supplementary list daily. "We have been informed that it will be considered after March 27," the official said.

The release of the first supplementary list triggered chaos, with the EC website showing all voters on the final list as being "under adjudication" or "deleted" for a few hours on Tuesday night.

Several pockets of rural WB have reported large-scale disenfranchisement. In Sujapur, which had the highest number of under-adjudication cases - 1.3 lakh voters out of 2.5 lakh - the supplementary list deepened the purge.

"We have been residents of Sujapur for more than 100 years. My name was there in the 2002 electoral rolls. Still, I was called for a hearing. I submitted all my documents, yet my name has been deleted," said Mir Ali Mahalder.

The villagers of Bahadurpur alleged that a majority of names under adjudication in that area had been deleted.

In Debipur village of Murshidabad's Aurangabad, 34-year-old Khirul Alam said only two of seven family members marked for judicial adjudication were included in the supplementary list.

In booth 208 of Pursurah constituency in Khanakul, out of 254 voters under adjudication, 194 have been deleted.

"My father, three elder brothers and I were under adjudication. My name has been included but the names of my 70-year-old father and all three siblings have been deleted. I don't see any logic in this," said Anarul Ali, 35.

Sources said EC had built a software to link judicial officers' dashboard with ECINET, the official portal to which poll rolls are uploaded.