The Election Commission will strengthen the process of "super-checking" cases disposed of by EROs and AEROs after finding that several voters have been approved for inclusion in the electoral rolls during the hearings despite not submitting documents specified by the poll panel.
"The EC is now focusing on the process of super-checking the decisions of the EROs and AEROs as it has been found that many voters called for hearing were approved based on Aadhaar cards alone. If super-checking is not done, electoral rolls in Bengal will be full of ineligible voters in the rolls," said a senior poll panel official.
EC officials have said that Aadhaar as a standalone document cannot be accepted as proof of citizenship and alternative documents specified by the EC — birth certificate, school leaving certificate, passport, among others — need to be submitted along with it.
None in the poll panel wanted to disclose the number of cases approved for inclusion in the rolls by EROs or AEROs without proper documents. However, some officials said that the figure was "significant" and drew the attention of the Nirvachan Sadan.
"Since a significant number of such cases have been identified, the poll panel will now deploy micro-observers to assist the district roll observers in super-checking. The decision clearly indicates that the number of such cases is so high that it cannot be ignored and measures have to be taken to identify all such cases before the final rolls are published," said an official.
The EC had called for hearing 32 lakh unmapped voters, who did not link themselves with the 2002 electoral rolls through self or progeny mapping, and 1.19 crore voters with discrepancies in their enumeration forms.
The hearings of most voters were now almost complete. Micro-observers, deployed at the hearing centres, would now be withdrawn and attached to the district roll observers to super-check all the disposed-of cases.
The decision of attaching micro-observers, who are central government officers engaged by the EC to conduct the SIR, to the roll observers in the districts became a point of discussion after chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday wrote to chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar questioning the legality of deploying central government officers in such a role.
In a letter dated January 31 to the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, the chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, wrote that the role, functions and authority of micro-observers during electoral roll revision were neither defined, contemplated nor authorised under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
"The letter was sent a day after the EC had decided to engage the micro-observers with district roll observers," said a source.
Sources in the poll panel said that the micro-observers played an "important role" during the hearings and many of them had drawn attention of the poll panel regarding the decision of the EROs and AEROs to dispose of cases approving inclusion in the voter list without proper documents.
"Now, as they will help roll observers to super-check each case disposed of by the EROs and the AEROs, it may not go down well with those opposing the SIR from Day One," said a source.
An official said that micro-observers had observed the entire hearing proceedings in the centres and knew what exactly happened there. "Micro-observers can give valuable inputs," he said.