EC to set up polling stations in 57 more residential high-rises across Bengal

Kolkata: The EC will set up polling stations in 57 more residential high-rises across Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas and East Burdwan, a senior Commission official said on Wednesday.Earlier, a list of 78 residential high-rises with at least 300 and 500 voters was sent from the Bengal CEO's office to the EC to set up polling booths in the forthcoming Assembly elections in the state. "Of these 78 high-rises, 21 already had polling stations on their premises. We will set up polling stations in the remaining 57 high-rises this time," the official stated.
However, booth rationalisation in Bengal has been put on hold as the voter lists are unavailable. According to the EC's revised schedule, a decision regarding booth rationalisation was to be made by Feb 25.The last date of publication of the final electoral roll is Feb 28. That list is unlikely to contain a little over 60 lakh names, and the Supreme Court entrusted the responsibility of scrutinising their documents and final disposal to the judicial officers. Passing an order on Tuesday, the Supreme Court said that if the verification exercise undertaken in respect of the ‘logical discrepancy/unmapped category' remains incomplete as on Feb 28, the EC may publish the final list, followed by supplements to the final list. "Such supplements shall be published on a continuous basis as soon as the pending exercise is completed in part or in full," the order said."Since the number of voters is not yet finalised and will not be on Feb 28, as the supplementary lists will be published then as directed by the Supreme Court, reorganisation of polling stations is not taking place. Only 57 additional booths will be added for high-rise buildings," an official said. The Commission will send proposals for setting up polling booths in the residential complexes through DEOs.Bengal now has 80,681 polling booths. Before the SIR began, there was a need to create approximately 14,000 additional booths based on the number of voters. The Commission also mentioned the possibility of reorganisation due to over 58 lakh names being excluded from the draft SIR list.The Commission previously stated that new booths would be created if there were more than 1,200 voters. As the SIR work is not completed, the calculation of how many voters were added or removed is not available. In this situation, the Commission stated that the previous booth arrangement will remain in place for now.