SIR: Names of electorate not matching with 2002 voter list across Kolkata

Kolkata, Nov 27 Names of the electorate in the Assembly constituencies in and around Kolkata are not matching with the voter list of 2002, sources in the office of Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal said.

Currently, digitisation of the enumeration forms for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) collected from voters was underway.

The sources said that till Wednesday afternoon, 26 lakh voters have been identified whose names or their parents' names do not match the voter list of 2002.

Such numbers are pretty high at over 30,000 for Assembly constituencies like Kolkata Port, Kasba, Sonarpur (Dakshin), Sonarpur (Uttar), Behala (Purba), Behala (Pashim), Rajarhat-NewTown, and Rajarhat Gopalpur, among others, with all being scattered within Kolkata and its two adjacent districts of North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas.

The numbers are also quite high in districts like West Burdwan and the two Indo-Bangladesh bordering districts of Nadia and Murshidabad, the sources said.

The total number of electors in West Bengal, as per the electoral roll as on October 27, is 7,66,37,529. Till Wednesday, the digitisation of 5 crore enumeration forms collected by the BLOs has been completed.

The actual picture will be clear on December 9, when the draft voters' list will be published.

As per SIR norms, those having their or their parents' names in the 2002 electoral rolls will automatically be considered valid voters.

Those not having their or their parents' names in the 2002 electoral rolls will have to submit any one of the 11 identity documents specified by the ECI.

Although following an order from the Supreme Court, AADHAAR had been included as the 12th identity document, the commission had made it clear that those furnishing AADHAAR will have to furnish one more document from the total 11 specified by the poll panel earlier.

The SIR exercise in West Bengal started from November 4 and is expected to be completed by the end of March next year. The last time the SIR was conducted in West Bengal was in 2002.

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