64 lakh voters out, 60 lakh on hold: EC's final West Bengal roll down 16% to 6.44 crore after SIR

KOLKATA: About 63.7 lakh Bengal voters were struck off, more than 60 lakh placed under adjudication and 1.9 lakh new voters added, taking the state’s voter count to 6.44 crore, the Election Commission’s final voters’ list revealed on Saturday. This means, Bengal’s electoral roll, which stood at 7.66 crore before SIR, has shrunk by 1.22 crore or 15.9%.

The electoral districts of North Kolkata, Malda, Murshidabad and Matua-dominated belts of North 24 Parganas and Nadia have witnessed the sharpest drop in number of voters.




At a press meet in the afternoon, Bengal CEO Manoj Agarwal had initially put the total number of voters in the state at 7.04 crore, which included the 60 lakh voters whose cases are still ‘under adjudication’. But in the evening, the poll body issued a statement with new figures — the 60 lakh under-adjudication voters were taken out of the final count, which was revised to 6.44 crore.

Among electoral districts, Murshidabad has the highest number of voters – 11 lakh – under adjudication, followed by Malda at 8.3 lakh. North 24 Parganas, which covers a large part of the Matua heartland has 5.9 lakh on the same list. Over 500 judicial officers are currently examining the under-adjudication cases. “Once cleared, these names will be added to the final list,” the CEO said.

According to EC rules, the electoral roll can be updated till the last date of filing of nominations. Agarwal had said on Friday that if elections are held in several phases, the names cleared by judicial officers will be added to the final voters’ list and published before the last date of filing of nominations for the respective phases and constituencies.

The 63.7 lakh electors whose names were deleted from the final list include the 58 lakh ASD (absent/shifted/dead) voters who were kept out of the draft SIR list, those who failed to submit EC-notified documents during hearings, and deceased voters. “Earlier, we had deleted about 58 lakh ASD voters following all procedures. This time, close to 5.5 lakh names were deleted through Form 7,” Agarwal said, adding, “Mistakes can always happen in such a massive exercise. If we find out that any official has intentionally deleted a voter’s name, that person will face strong action.”

Sporadic protests broke out in many districts following the publication of the electoral roll. In Bankura, which saw around 1.2 lakh deletions, protesters blocked roads for several hours. In West Burdwan’s Salanpur, cops had to rescue a BLO, Sanjay Garai, from a mob after 134 voters in a booth of 632 were marked as either deleted or under adjudication. Earlier, anticipating trouble in multiple areas, Bengal govt had sent senior police officers to Malda, Murshidabad, Krishnanagar and Cooch Behar to supervise law and order. No untoward incidents were reported from these districts.

While CEO Agarwal had said the electoral roll would be available both online and offline from noon, the online list became live only in the evening. Hundreds of voters queued up at polling booth, ERO and BDO offices to where hard copies of the list were displayed since morning.