The Election Commission will summon for hearings and document verification more than 24 lakh Bengal voters whose ways of linking themselves to the previous post-SIR rolls through their parents it finds suspicious.
Many more voters are under the scanner for various reasons and might be summoned later, commission sources said.
They said these 24.21 lakh voters had come under suspicion on the grounds of too many of them linking themselves to the same parent — particularly, a parent who seemed too young to have had so many children when the previous SIR was conducted.
These voters are among 1.67 crore that the poll panel had initially flagged on grounds of “logical discrepancies” in their enumeration forms. By now, the panel has whittled the number down to 1.18 crore by conducting verifications through the block-level officers (BLOs).
“After these 24.21 lakh voters are called for hearing and verification, more voters with logical discrepancies may be called,” a commission source said.
The poll panel is currently conducting hearings for 32 lakh “unmapped” voters who were unable to link themselves or their parents or grandparents to the previous post-SIR rolls.
For most of Bengal’s voters, this is the voter list from 2002, when the last SIR was conducted in the state. Those who shifted to Bengal after the 2002 exercise must link themselves to the last post-SIR rolls of the state they came from.
Earlier, nearly 58 lakh names from the 2025 electoral rolls in Bengal had been left out of the draft SIR rolls, published on December 16, on the grounds of absence, death and duplication or because they had shifted elsewhere.
A senior poll panel official explained the criterion under which the 24.21 lakh had been identified. He said that sets of six or more among them had linked themselves to the same parent on the previous SIR list.
“This was highly suspicious as so many people (on the previous SIR list) could not have had six or more children at the age they were in during 2002. Nor does this match the population growth trends witnessed in Bengal after the 2001 census,” the official said.
Apart from this, many who linked themselves to their parents and grandparents on the previous post-SIR list aroused suspicion because of too wide — or too narrow — an age gap with their purported ancestors, another official said.
“Some 11.95 lakh voters (apart from the 24.21 lakh to be summoned for now) have cited as their parents people on the 2002 list who are older than them by 15 years or less. They are likely to be called for hearings,” he said.
A senior poll panel official said the hearings for the 32 lakh “unmapped” voters would continue till January 10 or so. “Once that ends, the hearings for voters with logical discrepancies will start,” he said.
Sources said that another group of 8.77 lakh voters had drawn attention because the age gaps with their purported parents on the previous SIR list are bigger than 50 years. They too could be called
for hearings.
Another 3.29 lakh voters have linked themselves to grandparents less than 40 years older than them, which too the poll panel finds suspicious, sources said.
“How many of these voters will be called for hearings will become clear over the next week or so. The poll panel is working hard to reduce the number of voters with logical discrepancies through verification by BLOs,” a source said.
“The BLOs are currently verifying 85 lakh voters with mismatches in their parents’ names and clearing genuine voters.”
All eyes will be on the ruling Trinamool Congress when voters with “logical discrepancies” in their enumeration forms are summoned for hearings.
At a meeting in Delhi on Wednesday, Trinamool national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee asked chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar not to call such voters without releasing a full list of them, with the specific “logical discrepancy” spelled out against each name.