The number of dead, shifted, absent and duplicate voters in Bengal crossed 49 lakh on Wednesday and was racing towards 50 lakh in the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, according to the Election Commission.
“Based on the enumeration form data uploaded by booth-level officers (BLOs), it has been found that the number of absent, shifted, duplicate and dead voters is over 49 lakh, and is likely to cross 50 lakh by Wednesday night. As there is a minimum chance of getting these forms filled, it is almost certain that more than 50 lakh names would be deleted from the existing electoral rolls even before the draft rolls are published,” said a source in the poll panel.
The draft rolls will be published on December 16.
Sources said that according to figures available so far, the number of dead voters was about 23 lakh, absentees nearly 8 lakh, permanently shifted voters 17 lakh and duplicate entries over 1 lakh.
Sources said that the identification of so many dead, shifted, absent and duplicate voters in the existing electoral rolls suggested that the annual summary revision of rolls had not been carried out properly in Bengal over the years.
A senior official said that it appeared that the number of these voters would increase in the next few days.
The EC has asked district officials to verify several entries after the IT team of Nirvachan Sadan flagged several discrepancies.
“For example, the BLOs are carrying out progeny mapping after spotting discrepancies in the parental information of voters who feature in the 2025 rolls but are absent from the 2002 rolls. Similarly, several other discrepancies have to be revisited. These exercises would be carried out till the draft rolls are published. So, it is estimated that the figure of such voters would increase,” said a source.
Another section of officials pointed out that the number of dead, absent, shifted and duplicate voters increased significantly after the EC sent a special observer and electoral roll observers to each of the districts to monitor the exercise.
“The special observer warned district magistrates that the BLOs should not hold back the enumeration forms that could not be distributed after visiting voter addresses thrice. As soon as the warning was given, the number of such voters spiked over the past few days,” said a senior official.
The SIR enumeration process would continue till December 11.