The BJP on Tuesday submitted a memorandum to the chief electoral officer of Bengal, Manoj Agarwal, demanding the poll panel not entertain birth certificates issued after June 24 this year, alleging thousands of fake birth certificates were issued by local bodies across the state after the special intensive revision was announced in Bihar.

“The state government is hand in glove with infiltrators, who somehow enrolled their names in the voter list after 2002. We demand birth certificates issued after June 24 not be considered as any document during verification,” said Jagannath Chattopadhyay, a general secretary of the state BJP.

Birth certificate is one of the 11 documents specified by the Election Commission to be considered as an eligible document to be enlisted as a voter if one's parents name did not figure in the 2002 electoral rolls.

“We have documents that thousands of birth certificates were issued after June 24 by local bodies to validate electors who could not be linked to the 2002 electoral rolls. The EROs should be asked to ignore birth certificates for people over 18 years of age, but the certificates were issued after June 24 when the SIR for Bihar was announced,” said Chattopadhyay.

While the poll panel was yet to comment on the BJP's demand, it has taken several initiatives to ensure that documents submitted by the electors to enrol their names in electoral rolls were verified properly and in a timely manner.

Once the enumeration forms are submitted by the electors by December 4, the EROs will ask those whose names can't be linked with the 2002 electoral rolls to submit required documents to get included as voters.

“The CEO's office in Calcutta has asked district magistrates to appoint nodal officers of all line departments to verify documents submitted by the voters within three days. The process has to be completed in a time-bound manner as the process has to be completed between December 9 this year and January 31 next year, before the final rolls are published on February 7 next year,” said a source in the poll panel.

An official explained that voters would submit several documents, including caste certificates, school leaving certificates or birth certificates, to get included in the list if they did not have links with the 2002 electoral rolls.

“In such cases, nodal officers of tribal development department and the backward classes welfare department would verify whether the caste certificates were genuine. Similarly, school education department nodal officers would verify whether the school leaving certificates are genuine. It would be on the nodal officers of the health department to verify all birth certificates,” said an official.

On Tuesday, the SIR kicked off in Bengal as the BLOs started visiting the houses of voters to distribute enumeration forms.

“The exercise has started in all the districts. The district magistrates have been asked to start the exercise in all 80,000-odd booths on Tuesday as pre-filled enumeration forms have already reached the BLOs,” said a source in the poll panel.

Political parties, including the BJP, said that the exercise could not start smoothly on the first day of the SIR, as forms did not reach the BLOs early in the day.

The BJP also said that the poll panel should immediately announce how many booth-level agents were appointed by different political parties.