Kolkata, Aug 13
The records of the voters' lists of around a hundred polling booths in West Bengal, post the last Special Intensive Revision carried out by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in 2002, are not available.
The 2022 list is supposed to be the basis for carrying out the SIR by the Commission this year. Insiders from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said that the matter would be brought to the notice of the ECI and permission would be sought to use the draft voters’ list for 2003 as the basis of the fresh SIR.
The sources said that, in the case of certain booths, the records of the 2002 post-SIR were not available at all. In some cases, the lists have been damaged in such a way that it is impossible to upload them to the Commission's server.
It is learnt that the majority of the polling booths, whose records are not available, are from South 24 Parganas, Howrah, North 24 Parganas, and Birbhum districts, all being traditional strongholds of Trinamool Congress.
The development has surfaced at a time when the ECI and the state government are at loggerheads over the Commission's suspension of four election officials posted in two Assembly constituencies in two districts of West Bengal. The four officials were suspended for their involvement in the wrongful addition of names to the electoral rolls of these two seats.