Kolkata: There is an uproar over the SIR process in Bengal. Meanwhile, the Election Commission said that despite all the obstacles, the process of matching the names of voters with the electoral roll of 2002 is being done at a very fast pace. With the process becoming faster, the percentage of gap in name matching has also reduced significantly. Let us assume that compared to 49 percent in October, it has reduced to 4.3%. That means till now there are only 26 lakh people whose name data has not been found. Amidst all the controversies, the process of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is going on at the speed of a bullet in West Bengal. The good news is that in this electoral process, the names of very few people have not been matched with the 2002 electoral roll. Chief Electoral Officer in Bengal Manoj Aggarwal said on Thursday that 4.3% of registered voters screened in West Bengal so far could not be mapped to the last Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in 2002 or the data of any other state or UT. That means names of only 26 lakh voters are not in the electoral rolls. Now the question arises whether these are the same infiltrators on whom politics is heated in Bengal?
TMC delegation will meet the Election Commission today
The delegation of Mamata Banerjee’s party TMC will meet the Election Commission today on the ongoing SIR issue in the state. According to the information received, the Election Commission meeting is scheduled at 11 am on Friday. The Election Commission has given permission for delegation of 5 people. TMC has announced the names of a delegation of 10 people. If all the ten people are not allowed to go, then TMC can lodge a protest with the Election Commission.
Found son after 40 years
A surprising incident came to light during the Voter List Revision (SIR) in Suraj village of Bhilwara district of Rajasthan. 60 year old Uday Singh Rawat had reached the government school to fill the SIR form, but there his life changed forever. In 1980, Uday, a student of 8th class, had left home to work as a laborer during the summer holidays and lost his memory in a road accident. Remained missing for 40 years. When the teacher Jeevan Singh present in the school saw him, he called his old friend Bhupendra Singh. Bhupendra recognized the old wounds on his forehead and chest. 80 year old mother Chunni Devi cried and said, ‘This is my lost son!’ The family members ran to school. Uday was taken home amid emotional scenes. SIR not only cleaned the voter list but also returned a lost member to a family.
This figure is much less than the Election Commission’s assessment of October 28. In October, the Election Commission estimated that 49% of West Bengal’s 7.6 crore voters could not be linked to the rolls after SIR 2002, either their details or that of their parents. Aggarwal said, ‘As of Wednesday, just over 6 crore enumeration forms had been digitized, of which we have not been able to map about 26 lakh to the last SIR rolls of any state or union territory.’ Now the question arises whether those whose names are not matching with the SIR of 2002 are infiltrators from Bangladesh?
Is there an effect of increase in polling booths?
A senior official said that before the start of the SIR exercise on November 4, the mapping rate was 51%. However, in the last 23 years the number of polling booths has increased by approximately 19,000. During SIR of 2002, there were 61,531 polling booths in Bengal, which has now increased to 80,681. Many voters have moved to other assembly seats inside and outside the state. For this reason the percentage of mapping was low initially.
true voters should not be left out
CEC Aggarwal said, ‘As the ongoing SIR process is nearing completion, the mapping rates are improving.’ It is clear that if mapping increases, the names of those voters who have moved to the new booth will be included in the verified data through extra details in the enumeration form. Voters whose details are not in the 2002 SIR rolls because they were voters in other states then, are being mapped from the post-SIR rolls of those places.
