The West Bengal Congress unit has requested the Election Commission to delay announcing the state Assembly election schedule until all pending cases related to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the state’s electoral rolls are resolved. They emphasized the need for completion of the adjudication process for over 60 lakh voters in the state before proceeding with the upcoming election. Congress leaders highlighted concerns over discrepancies in the voter list published on February 28, which revealed that around 8.5% of voters, totaling 60,06,675 individuals, were marked for adjudication.
Addressing a press conference, Congress leaders, including Ghulam Ahmad Mir, Subhankar Sarkar, Isha Khan Choudhury, Prasenjit Bose, Ashutosh Chatterjee, B.P. Singh, and Munish Tamang, expressed worries about the observed pattern of voter additions and deletions during the SIR exercise. They pointed out that out of 9.64 lakh Form-6 and Form-6A applications for inclusion, only 1.82 lakh were accepted, resulting in the rejection of approximately 7.82 lakh applications. Moreover, while about 99,000 Form-7 applications for voter removal were received, over 5.46 lakh voters were deleted during the same period.
The Congress leaders alleged that an additional 4.47 lakh Form-7 applications were accepted after the claims and objections period during the SIR process. They highlighted the Supreme Court’s February 24 order, which directed the publication of supplementary lists upon completion of the pending exercise. Considering the scale of the process and constraints outlined in the court’s order, the adjudication process is anticipated to span several weeks.
Quoting the provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the leaders mentioned that Section 24 allows excluded voters to appeal before district election officers and the Chief Electoral Officer. However, they noted that Section 23 prohibits any inclusion in the electoral roll after the last date for filing nominations in an election. The Congress also urged the Election Commission to provide clear guidelines for the appeal and re-enrolment process for eligible voters who were erroneously excluded from the list. Additionally, they called for a re-verification of all Form-6 and Form-7 applications before finalizing the voter list for West Bengal.
