In West Bengal, more than 50,000 “unmapped” voters and over 3.5 lakh voters categorized as “logical discrepancy” cases have not attended hearings on claims and objections to the draft voters’ list. Despite repeated notices, these individuals risk deletion from the final voters’ list. Among the “unmapped” voters summoned for hearings, approximately 1.57% did not appear, while about 3.70% of voters identified as “logical discrepancy” cases have not participated in the ongoing hearing process.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) is currently conducting hearings for the 94,49,132 voters identified as “logical discrepancy” cases. The ECI aims to complete this process by the scheduled deadline of February 7. If these voters fail to attend the hearings, they may face exclusion from the final list. Before deleting the names of absentee voters, individual communications will be sent to them explaining the reasons for the proposed deletion.
The deadline for the completion of the hearing process is February 7, with the final voters’ list set to be released on February 14. Unmapped voters are those who could not establish any connection with the 2002 voters’ list, while “logical discrepancy” cases involve unusual family-tree data detected during mapping. The Election Commission may extend the hearing period for constituencies with incomplete hearings by a few days if needed.
