The presence of a large number of dead voters' names on the existing 2025 electoral rolls of Bengal appeared to be a cause of concern for the Election Commission since the issue emerged as a major point of discussion during the visit of an EC team to districts over the past three days.

"The EC team, led by deputy election commissioner Gyanesh Bharti and Bengal chief electoral officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal, came to know during meetings with district election officers and electoral registration officers that a huge number of dead voters had been identified by booth-level officers (BLOs) while distributing enumeration forms. This has happened as the names of dead voters were not deleted from the rolls over the years," said an official present in one such meeting.

The team began visiting districts on Tuesday after holding meetings with officials from North 24-Parganas and South 24-Parganas. The team conducted meetings in Nadia and Murshidabad on Wednesday and concluded their visit after holding discussions with officials in Malda on Thursday. The EC officials visited the districts to monitor the progress of the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

"One common issue flagged by the officials during the meetings was the presence of a large number of dead voters' names on the existing electoral rolls, based on which the SIR is being conducted. The EC officials asked the districts to ensure that the names of all such voters were excluded from the rolls to make them clean and that those of all eligible electors were included in the list," said a source.

Although the EC is yet to ascertain the number of dead voters enrolled on the existing electoral list, sources said that the ground reports were shocking.

"The EC officials were informed that while distributing the enumeration forms, the BLOs found that the number of dead voters in a booth ranged from 50 to more than 100. This is surprising because the summary revision of electoral rolls is carried out every year. It appears the exercise was not done properly in Bengal over the years," said the source.

The official said that the picture was almost the same in all districts.

"It now appears that the number of dead voters, whose names still figure in the existing rolls, could touch the mark of 40 lakh. Several permanently shifted voters' names are on the existing rolls. If these names are taken into account, at least 60 lakh names could be deleted even before the draft lists are published," said the official.

The presence of the names of dead and shifted voters on the electoral rolls assumed significance in Bengal as the Opposition parties, mainly the BJP, often alleged that the ruling party used those names for proxy voting.

"It is the need of the hour that elections are held with clean electoral rolls. If dead, shifted and fictitious voters' names are included in the list, a fair election cannot be held," said a BJP leader.

The presence of a large number of dead electors' names on the electoral rolls was first identified during a special revision of the voters' list ahead of the byelections in the Kaliganj Assembly segment in Nadia earlier this year.

Nearly 3.2 per cent of 2.50 lakh electorate of Kaliganj were found to be dead or had shifted permanently.

"It was found that the BLOs did not update the rolls properly. Now, as government employees are deployed as BLOs ahead of the SIR, the actual picture is coming out," said a source.

A Trinamool Congress insider, however, blamed the EC for the situation.

"In previous years, the EC used to pull up officials in case more than two per cent of names were deleted from the rolls during summary revision. Perhaps that was why the officials were afraid of deleting names from the electoral rolls en masse," said the Trinamool leader.

A senior bureaucrat said that if dead and shifted voters' names were omitted from the rolls regularly, the rate would have always been below the two per cent mark that usually draws the attention of the EC. "As this was not done during the summary revision of rolls, the figure of dead and shifted voters reached an alarming level," said the bureaucrat.

District authorities, sources said, had taken some steps to ensure that no dead or permanently shifted voters' names figured in the post-SIR rolls.

"The majority of the districts have asked the BLOs to ensure that they write 'DEAD' on top of the enumeration forms for the electors they find to be dead and keep the data with themselves before uploading the same to the BLO app on the same day. Some were forced to distribute the forms to relatives even after they found the voter to be dead because of political pressure. In such cases, the BLOs have been asked to mark 'DEAD' on top of the forms before handing them over to the relatives," said a DM.