Kolkata. The Election Commission of India on Saturday released the final voter list after a special intensive revision (SIR) campaign in West Bengal ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.
In this process, about 63 lakh 66 thousand absent, transferred, dead and duplicate names were removed. Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Aggarwal told in the press conference that the number of voters registered in the draft list of 7 crore 66 lakh has now reduced to 7 crore 4 lakh.
Aggarwal said in detail, “In the first phase of special intensive vetting, three lakh 75 thousand voters were removed from the draft list, while one lakh 82 thousand new voters were included. Apart from this, 60 lakh voters are in the ‘under consideration’ category, whose franchise will be decided by the local judicial authorities.”
He acknowledged the minor mistakes made in this huge operation and said that the Commission made immediate corrections. More than 58 lakh names had already been removed from the draft list released in December, and this number will increase further after the decision on ‘under consideration’ names.
A total of seven crore eight lakh people had submitted enumeration forms in the process, of which more than 1 crore 50 lakh voters, including those with logical anomalies and unplanned categories, were heard at various centres. According to sources, physical copies of the voter list are being distributed in all the districts from Saturday afternoon, and it will be available online by the evening.
47 thousand names removed from Mamata Banerjee’s Bhawanipur constituency. 47 thousand 111 absent-transferred-dead-duplicate names were removed from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Bhawanipur constituency in South Kolkata (total 1 lakh 61 thousand voters). Also, 14 thousand 154 names are ‘under consideration’, whose decision has to be taken by the judicial authorities.
This is a serious challenge for the Trinamool Congress supremo before the assembly elections scheduled at the end of April. Mamata has recently held several meetings with local leaders, booth level agents and workers.
11 thousand names were removed from Shubhendu’s assembly. Meanwhile, about 11 thousand names of opposition leader Shubhendu Adhikari were removed from Nandigram area of East Midnapore district. In the 2021 assembly elections, Shubhendu defeated Mamata by a small margin of just 1900 votes.
More than four lakh names were removed from Kolkata North district and two lakh 15 thousand names were removed from Kolkata South (including Bhawanipur). Overall, more than six lakh voters from the two major Kolkata districts were left out of the rolls.
Political reactions and counter-allegations Union Minister of State for Education and former Bengal BJP President Sukant Majumdar told the media, “Out of the 65 lakh names removed so far, 24 lakh are dead voters. Trinamool Congress has been winning elections by casting false votes in the names of these dead voters. This time this machinery of the ruling party will fail.” BJP called it a big step towards clean elections.
It is noteworthy that this three-month special intensive review process, which started from November 2024, was completed amidst political allegations, street demonstrations and court battles across the state. Its objective was to make the voter list completely pure, so that the upcoming assembly elections are fair. This step of the Election Commission is believed to increase the transparency of the electoral process.
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