The Election Commission flagged about 1.67 crore enumeration forms uploaded from Bengal for having “logical discrepancies”, soon after the enumeration process completed on Thursday night.

“The EC has billed 1.67 crore enumeration forms as suspicious and ordered re-verification of the electors. Booth-level officers (BLOs) would soon start visiting the addresses of the electors and the process could continue till the publication of final rolls on February 14 next year,” said a senior official of the poll panel.

Sources in the EC said that after the enumeration process had concluded on Thursday, the panel informed the office of the Bengal chief electoral officer, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, in Calcutta about the large number of "faulty" enumeration forms which had been flagged by the IT team of Nirvachan Sadan. The decision to re-verify the details of these electors was communicated to the CEO's office on Thursday night itself.

According to EC sources, the 1.67 crore enumeration forms have "logical discrepancies", most of which are related to erroneous progeny mapping.

"Of the 1.67 crore voters under the EC's scanner, 85 lakh have linked their names with the voters of 2002 electoral rolls in a way that has raised serious doubts,” said a source.

According to figures available with the EC, the names of the parents of 85,01,486 electors, figured in the 2025 rolls, appeared as a mismatch when they linked themselves with a 2002 voter.

The mismatch was noticed, as the names of the 2002 voters were different from the names mentioned in the 2025 rolls.

Besides, 11,95,230 voters enlisted in the 2025 rolls have linked themselves as children of voters of the 2002 rolls, but their age gap remained below 15 years. Another 8,77,736 voters called themselves children of 2002 voters, but the age gap between the father or mother and the voter was more than 50 years. Also, 3,29,152 voters described themselves as the grandchildren of 2002 voters but the age gap remained less than 40 years.

Many people have also linked themselves with the same 2002 voters as their parents. There are 24,21,133 voters enrolled in the 2002 rolls, who have been tagged as parents by more than six voters of the 2025 rolls.

There are some other categories, like gender mismatch of voters and mismatch of spelling of parents' names, when compared between the 2002 and 2025 rolls.

“Misspelling of parents' names is not a major issue, as misspelt names in the 2002 rolls were a common fault. But remaining suspicious cases, mainly those who have suspicious progeny mapping, have come under the serious scrutiny of the EC,” said a source.

According to the plan, the BLOs would be asked to re-verify all these cases by visiting the addresses of the electors who were flagged by the poll panel. If discrepancies are also identified by the BLOs, the officer would report them through the BLO app.

“There is a high chance that many of these electors in question would not be available at the given addresses,” said a source. "Even if they are found, they would be asked to explain the discrepancies. The BLO would report it to the EC, and the poll panel would take a decision whether the elector would be called for a hearing and verification of documents."

Earlier, it was decided that those who would not be able to link themselves with the 2002 rolls would be called for the hearing and verification. The figure of such unmapped voters stood at around 30 after the enumeration process concluded.

Apart, 58.08 lakh voters were found to be dead, shifted, absent or duplicate during the enumeration phase and their names would be deleted from the draft rolls that would be published on December 16.

A senior official said: “Since the EC flagged so many suspicious entries, it appears that more than 1 crore voters could be called for hearing and verification, while the number of deleted voters would go far beyond 58.08 lakh.”

Telling figures

As the EC released the details of absent, shifted, dead and duplicate voters — the names that would not be included in the draft electoral rolls — on Friday, it appeared that Calcutta could have the highest number of names which would be deleted from the electoral rolls.

Among the Assembly segments in Calcutta, Bhabanipur, from where chief minister Mamata Banerjee was elected, could see the deletion of the names of 44,786 electors out of 2.06,295 existing voters. Kolkata Port, the Assembly seat represented by Firhad Hakim, could witness the deletion of 63,730 voters’ names. The seat has a total of 2,43,452 voters.

Nandigram, the Assembly segment from where the leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari, was elected, could see the deletion of 10,599 names. Nandigram’s electoral roll has 2,78,212 names now. The figures can change as any of the omitted voters can appeal before the ERO between December 16 and January 15.