Individual voters stuck in the “adjudication” limbo of the Election Commission’s special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls may or may not get to know whether they will get to vote but as of post-noon Tuesday it is still not known exactly how many people will get to vote in the Bengal Assembly election less than a month away.
It is simply not known yet how many voters have been left out in the supplementary list the Election Commission published around midnight on Monday.
More than 13 hours later, the commission or the state chief electoral officer’s office is yet to release the absolute figures among the list of adjudicated voters who have made it to the supplementary list and those who have been disenfranchised.
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The supplementary list was released just a day before the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a bunch of petitions including one filed by chief minister Mamata Banerjee against the SIR process.
All through Monday, the Election Commission had pushed the deadline for releasing the first supplementary several times.
Bengal chief electoral officer Manoj Agarwal had said on Monday the 705 judicial officers appointed on the instructions of the Supreme Court have disposed of around 29 lakh of the 60.06 lakh cases marked under adjudication.
An elector in Bengal can click on the website voters.eci.gov.in. From the dropdown options click the state, West Bengal.
A voter has the option to search their name through the electoral photo identity card number provided by the Election Commission. They can also search through the “adjudication supplementary list number one” and the “adjudication deleted list number one” links.
After clicking on the adjudication list number one, for any of the 294 constituencies a list of the part is provided. Electors can click on the specific part if they are aware of it and download the file.
However, in many of the constituencies the data could not be accessed as of 2pm on Tuesday. This includes Bhabanipur, the Kolkata constituency where chief minister Mamata Banerjee is contesting against leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari,
The PDF file after download reads: “No adjudication pertaining to this part till 5pm on 23.3.2006.”
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For some booths, data are available. In a booth in Rajarhat-New Town adjacent to Kolkata, the data revealed that 11 voters were deleted from the adjudication process.
Officials in the Bengal CEO’s office said the total number of voters included or deleted in the supplementary list would be announced soon.
The final draft released on February 28 had given the total electors in the state as 6.44 crore.
From the 7.66 crore voters before the SIR exercise was rolled in Bengal, the commission had deleted 58.25 lakh voters marked as dead, absent, shifted or duplicate, bringing down the total electors to 7.04 crore. In the final roll released on February 28 an additional five lakh voters were confirmed as deleted and 1.82 lakh new voters added.