Bengal SIR turmoil: Hearing deadline lapses, 4 lakh voters stare at deletion amid ECI silence

Uncertainty continues to grip West Bengal’s electoral roll revision as the deadline for hearings on claims and objections under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has officially lapsed, even though the process remains incomplete in around 15 Assembly constituencies.

The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal has sought a seven-day extension from the Election Commission of India, but no response has yet come from the poll panel’s headquarters in New Delhi, officials confirmed.

According to sources in the CEO’s office, confusion now centres on two key issues: whether the extension will be granted at all, and if approved, whether it will apply only to the 15 pending Assembly segments or to the entire state.

“If the extension is applied across West Bengal, it will inevitably delay the publication of the final voters’ list scheduled for February 14,” an official said.

The constituencies where hearings are yet to conclude are largely spread across minority-dominated Malda, coastal South 24 Parganas, and Kolkata (Uttar) districts.

Adding to the anxiety, more than 4 lakh voters have already been flagged for deletion from the final electoral roll after failing to appear for hearings despite repeated notices. Of these, around 50,000 are categorised as “unmapped” voters, while nearly 3.5 lakh fall under “logical discrepancy” cases.

Unmapped voters are those who could not establish a linkage with the 2002 electoral roll through either self-mapping or progeny mapping. Logical discrepancy cases, meanwhile, involve irregularities detected in family-tree data during the progeny mapping exercise.

The scale of deletions has been significant from the start. When the draft voters’ list was released in December last year, as many as 58,20,899 names were struck off after being identified as deceased, relocated, or duplicated. The final extent of deletions will be known once the revised list is published on February 14.

Following the publication, a full Bench of the ECI is expected to visit the state to review the situation before announcing the polling dates for the Assembly elections.

Meanwhile, the SIR process itself faces judicial scrutiny. A crucial hearing is scheduled on Monday before a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to raise objections again, as she did during the previous hearing on February 4.

With deadlines breached, deletions mounting, and clarity from the poll panel still awaited, the voter list exercise has become a fresh flashpoint in Bengal’s high-stakes election season.