As many as 90.82 lakh names have been shorn off the post-SIR Bengal voter list with 27.16 lakh of the 60 lakh people under adjudication being deleted, according to Election Commission sources.
The post-SIR electoral roll now stands at 6.77 crore, down from 7.66 crore before the exercise began. A staggering 45.39 per cent of those under adjudication have not made it to the voter list.
The removal of over 90 lakh names, or 11.85 per cent of the pre-SIR Bengal electorate, could hold the key in a closely fought contest. Many of those deleted were removed from the rolls merely because they could not submit supporting documents specified by the Election Commission, sources in the poll panel said.
In the seven districts with substantial Muslim presence, a total of 17,10,764 names have been deleted following adjudication.
In the two districts with robust Matua populations, North 24-Parganas and Nadia, 2,65,077 and 2,08,026 voters, respectively, have been deleted. Administrative sources said a substantial concentration is in the Ranaghat subdivision along the India-Bangladesh border.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to entertain the Bengal government’s plea to direct the 19 appellate tribunals to pass interim orders allowing at least certain categories of excluded voters to vote, saying “we do not want to rush it”. This deadline for excluded voters from the 152 first-phase constituencies expired on Monday, while that for voters from the 142 second-phase constituencies will end on Thursday, April 9. The next hearing is on April 13.
The deleted voters can now appeal before the 19 tribunals set up by Calcutta High Court within 15 days. However, with the tribunals having cleared just two cases so far and the deadline for the second and final phase of polling ending in two days, not many are expected to be added to the voter list.
“The deleted voters can appeal online on the ECI NET platform, or they can do so physically before SDOs and DMs, who would digitise the applications and upload them on the platform,” said a source.
Although no official figures have been given out, Election Commission sources began transmitting data to journalists on Monday night after the judicial officers completed the adjudication of 60.06 lakh voters.
According to figures provided by the EC sources, 32.68 lakh people have been approved for inclusion in the poll rolls after adjudication.
“The disposal of the cases of all the 60.06 lakh people under adjudication was completed late on Monday night. Of them, 27.16 lakh people will be deleted from the final rolls,” said a senior official in the poll panel.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee pledged to take up the case of the deleted voters.
“I went to the Supreme Court to fight against the wrongful deletion of people. According to the list published yesterday, only 32 lakh names have been retained. We will fight for them in the tribunal — legitimate voters who are still missing from the voters’ list,” she said at a rally in Nadia.
A total of 58.20 lakh names had been removed from the rolls in the enumeration phase as they were marked absent, shifted, duplicate or dead voters. After the scrutiny of the enumeration forms, a total of 5.46 lakh names were deleted from the “preliminary final rolls” that were published on February 28 as they were found ineligible.
When the “preliminary final rolls” were published, a total of 60.06 lakh voters were put under adjudication after “logical discrepancies” were detected in their enumeration forms.
“The adjudication process was conducted by 705 judicial officers. The names of the eligible voters will be included in the final rolls,” said a poll panel source.
According to the data provided by the EC sources, Murshidabad district has recorded the highest number of voters deleted after adjudication — 4.55 lakh. A total of 3.25 lakh names have been deleted from the rolls of North 24-Parganas. The figures for Malda, South 24-Parganas and East Burdwan are 2.39 lakh, 2.22 lakh and 2.09 lakh, respectively.