West Bengal’s chief electoral officer on Saturday said that despite repeated summons, 4.9 lakh voters did not show up for hearings after notices were sent to them as part of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in the state, The Hindu reported.
Additionally, 1.6 lakh voters were flagged as “ineligible” due to errors, added Manoj Kumar Agarwal.
The statement came after the hearings of the notices were formally completed in the state
On February 10, the Election Commission extended the deadline for hearing responses to the notices to February 14. The date for publishing the final voter list had also been moved to February 28.
The Supreme Court had on February 9 directed that the deadline for scrutinising documents and objections under the revision of the electoral rolls in West Bengal be extended at least for a week after February 14.
On Saturday, Agarwal said that those whose names were in the draft roll but did not feature in the final list would get an order, The Hindu reported. They would then have a chance to appeal before the district election officer and subsequently before the chief electoral officer, he added.
“They can always get their names back [on the rolls] if they were removed due to errors,” the newspaper quoted Agarwal as saying.
All the hearings related to the special intensive revision had been officially completed in West Bengal within the extended deadline, he added.
The poll officer also said that this was not the end of inclusions and deletions from the electoral list, as voters could still apply for fresh inclusions via Form 6 during other elections.
However, all the 4.9 lakh persons who did not show up for the hearings related to the exercise and the 1.6 lakh ineligible voters could be removed from the 2026 final list, The Hindu reported.
Assembly elections in the state are expected to be held by April.
The draft electoral rolls for West Bengal under the special intensive revision exercise were published on December 16. The names of over 58 lakh voters were removed from voter lists in the state as they had either died, migrated outside the state or did not submit their enumeration forms.
The deletion from the draft roll was provisional and citizens could object to their names being removed from the list. Citizens whose names had been dropped from the list had been permitted to file their claims and objections.
During the claims and objections stage in the state, voters identified for verification had been called for personal hearings.
Over 94.4 lakh persons had also been summoned for hearings under the “logical discrepancies” category. More than 31.6 lakh voters who were classified as “unmapped” were also asked to appear for hearings.
Voters with “logical discrepancies” in their forms were separate from those whose names were removed, and from the “unmapped voters”, who could not establish a familial link with the voters’ list of 2002.
Logical discrepancies include a mismatch in parents’ names, a low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being above six.
Besides West Bengal, the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 11 other states and Union Territories.
In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly elections in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll.
Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll
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