Many voters who are alive have been mistakenly marked as deceased in the draft rolls. Ongoing problems with spelling inconsistencies and faulty ancestry mapping persist, despite numerous checks and balances.
Glaring mistakes in the draft rolls have multiplied the trauma already inflicted on them, a platform of booth-level officers (BLO) alleged, as they staged a road blockade in front of the office of the chief electoral officer (CEO) in BBD Bag on Monday.
They stayed put till Monday night, disrupting traffic in central Calcutta for hours. Many people returning home from work were stranded.
The draft electoral rolls, which followed the SIR exercise in Bengal, were published on December 16. Ever since, the harassment has only gone up, alleged the protesting BLOs.
“Resolving logical inconsistencies has emerged as the foremost challenge. Each individual is managing over 100 such inconsistencies. This necessitates returning to
homes we have already visited and requesting the same set of documents again. Voters feel we are pestering them. Nevertheless, we are not accountable for these errors. The Election Commission is the one responsible,” expressed Bappaditya Guha, a BLO in Jorasanko and a teacher at the Metropolitan Institution (Main).
Guha is the joint convenor of BLO Adhikar Raksha Committee, the platform that organised the demonstration and roadblock. It is perceived to be close to the Trinamool Congress, but the concerns voiced by many participants reflected the problems that plagued BLOs and electors alike.
A voter in Behala West received a call from the BLO on Sunday evening. The officer stated that there was a discrepancy in the spelling of his father’s name between the 2002 list and the 2025 list. The voter has been asked to submit a document which has her father’s name spelt correctly.
A BLO in Nadia’s Ranaghat Uttar Purba said the draft rolls showed 15 dead voters in his booth. “I know for a fact that seven of them are alive. While collecting the enumeration forms and uploading them online, I did not commit any errors. Then how were these people dubbed dead voters?” asked the BLO, who was on NS Road on Monday.
Almost every such BLO that this newspaper interacted with shared a similar ordeal.
Sources in the poll panel said some 1.36 crore enumeration forms still have “logical discrepancies”, most of which are related to erroneous progeny mapping.
At the protest on Monday, frequent slogans were raised against the EC and the Centre. The assembly began around 1pm. The agitators demanded that a delegation be allowed to meet the CEO. However, the police did not budge.
A group of protesters attempted to break through the police barricades but were not successful. Around 3.40pm, the organisers urged protesters to squat on the road. Soon after, they did.
The stand-off crippled traffic in central Calcutta. Both flanks of NS Road and the India Exchange place were shut to traffic.
Both Howrah-bound and Sealdah-bound traffic were affected. Officers from the traffic department said they made a few diversions to regularise the vehicular movement.
Many BLOs stated that their teaching job were taking a big hit because of the additional workload. With the exam season approaching, the situation will only get worse, they said.
“I have a daughter and an elderly mother. My husband is posted at another district. I am not being able to manage the additional workload,” said Aparna Biswas, a BLO in Bongaon in North 24-Parganas.