West Bengal polls: 12.9 lakh 'deleted' voters will know today if they can vote on Wednesday

KOLKATA: Nearly 12.9 lakh voters across 142 assembly segments, which go to the polls on April 29, will get to know on Monday whether they get back their voting rights. According to the SC guideline, names cleared by the SIR tribunals by Monday will be added to the supplementary voter lists 48 hours before the polls. In the first phase, only 139 were added to the voter list.

In the 142 assembly constituencies, spread across 7 districts, names of 12,87,622 electors were deleted during the judicial adjudication process. In Kolkata, which has Kolkata North and Kolkata South electoral districts, judicial officers rejected 67,632 names. The highest number of deletions happened in Kolkata Port (13,395), followed by Chowringhee, where 10,424 names were struck off.





A district-wise break-up shows that among the districts going to the polls in the second phase, North 24 Parganas recorded the highest deletion in the judicial adjudication (3,25,666). For South 24 Parganas, East Burdwan, and Nadia, the figures are 2,22,929, 2,09,805, and 2,08,626, respectively.

Among the 142 seats, Metiabruz in South 24 Parganas tops the list with 39,579 deleted voters in the judicial adjudication. Rajarhat-New Town saw a deletion of 24,132 voters. Matua-dominated constituencies like Ranaghat North East, Ranaghat South, and Gaighata also witnessed 20,796, 17,411, and 19,638 deletions, respectively.

On Saturday, Bengal CEO Manoj Agarwal said, "For second phase, names that will be cleared by tribunals by Monday will get a chance to vote."

In the 152 assembly constituencies where voting took place on April 23, a total of 14,28,771 elector names were deleted during the judicial adjudication. The tribunal included only 139 voters and excluded 8 who were earlier included by the judicial officers during adjudication.

Shamim Akhter, an Entally resident and an associate professor at Aliah University, said, "Given the low rate of clearance as seen before the first phase, I have little hope that my voting right will be restored."

Imran Zaki, another deleted voter from Bowbazar, rued, "It is evident that SIR is pre-planned to delete names of genuine voters like me. I have faith in the judiciary, and my name must appear since I have all documents establishing my citizenship. But I doubt if I will be able to vote because of the micro percentage of clearance by tribunals before the first phase of polling."

Renu Khatun, the nurse from East Burdwan whose arm was chopped off by her husband and who now uses a prosthetic limb, has found her name deleted from the electoral roll after judicial scrutiny. "I am extremely worried about my chance of getting the voting right backelections. There's no other option but to wait. I am under a lot of stress," Khatun told TOI.

(Inputs from Sarthak Ganguly in Kolkata and Mohammad Asif in Burdwan)
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