12L on Bengal’s 2nd supplementary list, but no clarity on who made the cut

KOLKATA: West Bengal’s second supplementary voters’ list was published around 11pm Friday, albeit with little clarity on how many among the 12 lakh names on it had cleared judicial scrutiny.

As was the case when Election Commission released the first supplementary rolls close to midnight last Monday, there were more questions than CEO Manoj Agarwal had answers for. “About 37 lakh of the 60 lakh pending cases have been disposed of till now. After receiving the list from Calcutta HC, EC will take 4-6 hours to process and upload it on our server,” he said in the afternoon.




The list can be accessed at voters.eci.gov.in, ceowestbengal.wb.gov.in, and ECINET app. Copies will be displayed at polling stations and available with district election officers, DMs, SDOs and BDOs. Those who didn’t make the cut can appeal within 15 days, online or offline, before appellate tribunals. One more list is slated to be published on April 3.

EC sources said 35-40% of those whose documents were examined by judicial officers had been disenfranchised.

CM Mamata Banerjee’s TMC filed an appeal Friday before CJ Sujoy Paul of Calcutta HC, seeking daily publication of supplementary lists. The party said the first list only had 749,863 names, although judicial officers had by then disposed of 27 lakh cases. There was no information on the remaining 20-odd lakh names, it said.

It also pointed out that 11 of its election candidates under adjudication were still in the dark about their voter status. It flagged the narrow window for disposal of appeals against exclusion, referring to the April 7 deadline for “locking” voters’ lists for the 152 constituencies going to polls in the first phase.

On Friday, CJ Paul chaired a meeting on the publication of the second supplementary list with chief secretary Dushyant Nariala, home secretary Sanghamitra Ghosh, DGP S N Gupta, Kolkata police commissioner Ajay Nand, CEO Agarwal and special roll observer Subrata Gupta.
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