West Bengal elections: SC deadline over, EC updates roll, voters to know fate today

KOLKATA: Election Commission will add the names approved by SIR tribunals to Bengal's electoral roll till Tuesday midnight and issue an updated list on Wednesday for the 152 assembly seats that will go to the polls in the first phase on Thursday, chief electoral officer Manoj Agarwal said.

"The names cleared by the tribunals will be added to the list till 12 midnight. The returning officers, district election officers, political parties and candidates will get the updated list tomorrow. The electors whose cases are approved by the tribunals will be informed through their booth-level officers," Agarwal said on Tuesday evening.




Earlier, the poll panel had reported a fresh enrolment of around 5 lakh voters after the publication of the final electoral roll on Feb 28, taking the state's total voter count to 6.8 crore. Which means Bengal has witnessed a 10.9% (83.8 lakh) drop in the number of voters compared with the pre-SIR count of over 7.6 crore.

The voter count is likely to increase further after the names cleared by 19 tribunals - set up on Supreme Court's order to hear appeals against deletion of names from the electoral roll during the SIR - are added to the list.

As of now, the number of voters in the first phase of the elections stands at 3.6 crore.

In the first round of deletion after the SIR started, the names of around 58.2 lakh ASD (absent, shifted, dead/duplicate) voters were removed from the roll. The draft list that was published on Dec 16 had a little over 7 crore names, down from over 7.6 crore on the pre-SIR list.

Going by the final list published on Feb 28, 5.5 lakh names were deleted from the draft roll. The Feb list had 7.04 crore names, including more than 60 lakh placed "Under Adjudication" and around 1.9 lakh newly enrolled names.

'No update on appeal status, there is none to help us out'

Among the names under "Under Adjudication", 33 lakh were cleared by judicial officers and the rest were rejected. Hence, the electoral roll strength came down to 6.8 crore (including 5 lakh new enrolments from Feb 29 to April 9).

Over the past four days, hundreds of people turned up at the tribunals' office in Joka daily to seek updates on their appeals against deletions. Denied entry by armed guards, the deleted voters - many of whom came from far-off districts where elections will be held on April 23 - returned without any information about the fate of their appeals.

Standing in the scorching heat outside the barricaded office, these people sought help from police, who explained to them that none other than those issued hearing notices would be let in and allowed to meet the retired judges heading the tribunals. The absence of a help desk was only complicating their problems.

"There is none to help us out," said Hasan Khan, who came from Malamba in East Burdwan. "My name and the names of my brother and sister have been deleted. We had filed appeals online and submitted hard copies to DM's office. Till now there is no update on the appeals."
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