Kolkata, Feb 18 With only four days left for the scrutiny of the supporting identity documents provided by the voters at the hearing session regarding the claims and objections to the draft voters' list in West Bengal, more than 1,14,000 documents submitted during the hearing have yet to be uploaded into the system for final examination.
Sources in the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said that on Tuesday night, 1,14,772 documents were yet to be uploaded in the system.
“Currently, two assignments are going on in a parallel manner. The first is the scrutiny of the documents already uploaded, and the second is the uploading of the documents submitted in the last lap of the hearing sessions that were concluded on February 14. The scrutiny of the documents submitted in the last lap of the hearing session will be done once their uploading is complete,” a CEO’s office insider explained.
Following these developments, apprehensions have surfaced about the possibility of extending the deadline for completing the scrutiny process, which is February 21.
The districts having the maximum number of voters’ documents yet to be uploaded include Cooch Behar, North Dinajpur, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, and the electoral district of Kolkata (Uttar).
“Had the uploading of documents been concluded on February 14 along with the hearing session, then currently the electoral officers could have concentrated only on the scrutiny of documents, and in that case the possibilities of deadline extension would not have surfaced,” said the CEO’s office insider.
Meanwhile, as the parallel scrutiny of already-uploaded documents is progressing, the number of voters eligible for exclusion in the final voters list for submitting fake or “unlisted” identity documents is also increasing. On Tuesday, around 35,000 such voters submitting fake or “unlisted” identity documents were identified.
As per the present schedule, the final voters’ list in West Bengal is to be published on February 28. On March 1, a full bench of the ECI will be on a two-day visit to the state to take stock of the post-SIR scenario. Shortly after that, the ECI will announce the polling dates for the Assembly election in the state.
--IANS
src/dpb
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor