West Bengal SIR: There are assembly elections in West Bengal next year. Even before that a big scandal has come to light in Bengal. A big revelation has been made regarding the SIR issued in West Bengal. The Election Commission is preparing to re-check more than one crore names in the voter list of West Bengal. This decision has been taken after ‘mysterious data’ came to light during the SIR i.e. Special Review process going on across the country. Surprisingly, there are some voters whose age is more than their father’s age. Some grandchildren are older than the grandfather.
According to Election Commission sources, more than one crore names may have to be re-examined. The reason is that in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) campaign of the voter list in West Bengal, mistakes have been found in the names of the fathers of 85 lakh voters. Sources say that due to the discrepancy in the father’s name, re-investigation is necessary. In some cases, it was found that in the records of about 13.5 lakh voters, the name of the same person was recorded as both father and mother. That means, parents of 13.5 lakh voters have the same name.
Sources said that in some families, the name of the father of one member has been mistakenly entered in the column of the mother of another member. Apart from this, in the records of 11,95,230 voters, the age of the father is only 15 years more than the son, while in the records of 3,29,152 voters, the age of the grandfather is more than 40 years less than the grandson. In at least 24,21,133 cases, six or more children of the same person are registered. This is the first stage of the Special Review (SIR) process in West Bengal. This mysterious data came to light during cross-checking.
The Election Commission has digitalized all application forms and voters will be called for a hearing to verify their records. The collected data will be shared with district election officials and block level officials, who will conduct door-to-door checks. Voters will also get a chance to verify the data in the ‘Claims and Objections’ stage.
According to the latest data of the Election Commission, 57,52,207 voters in the state have been kept in the ‘missing’ or ‘not known’ category in their forms. Of these, 24,14,750 voters have been declared dead, more than 11,57,000 could not be traced, while 19,89,914 have changed their address. 13,05,627 voters are registered at many places and more than 11,57,000 forms could not be collected due to various reasons. On Friday, December 12, the Election Commission also released assembly constituency-wise data of removal of names from the voter list. Let us tell you that the last date for submitting nomination forms was a day earlier. The draft voter list for West Bengal will be published on 16 December.
