On Monday (23rd March), the Election Commission of India (ECI) published the 1st supplementary voters’ list ahead of the West Bengal Vidhan Sabha election.
The development comes amid the adjudication of pending cases of ‘doubtful voters’ in the State. During the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the Election Commission of India deleted a whopping 58,20,899 names from the electoral rolls of West Bengal on account of death, absence, shift, and duplication.
At the same time, a list of 60 lakh ‘doubtful voters’ was finalised, which had to be adjudicated by judicial officers. As per the directives of the Supreme Court, the Election Commission is mandated to publish the supplementary voters’ list to ensure the accuracy of the electoral rolls.
About 29 lakh cases of ‘doubtful voters’, which were previously under adjudication, have been included in the first supplementary voters’ list.
This is the first of multiple supplementary rolls. ECI will publish the second list on 27th March and a third list on 3rd April this year. It must be mentioned that a team of 705 judicial officers are working to determine names flagged for review.
The suspense over deleted names continued on Monday as ECI did not highlight how many voters were removed or included in the electoral rolls.
However, voters can check whether their name is in the supplementary list by providing their booth number and constituency details on the ECI website.
Reportedly, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal, Manoj Agarwal, refused to share the number of voters whose names were deleted in the adjudication process.
He said that those aggrieved by the supplementary list can challenge the decision of the ECI in appellate tribunals established by the Calcutta High Court.
It must be mentioned that the highest number of cases of doubtful voters were in Murshidabad (11 lakh), Malda (8.28 lakh), South 24 Parganas (5.22 lakh) and North 24 Parganas (5 lakh).
The supplementary voter lists thus aim to reinstate valid voters whose documents required deeper verification before the election dates of 23rd April and 29th April.
