About 58 lakh names of voters have been marked for deletion after Thursday, the last date of completion of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bengal, sources in the office of the State Chief Electoral Officer said. This number is apart from about 29,000 forms, which were not returned by the voters. This is also apart from those names which are likely to be summoned for hearing in days to come, sources said, adding a preliminary impression shows that there is a huge discrepancy in the forms that have been submitted.
“This could be tens of lakhs… that is, such a large number of people is likely to be summoned for hearing,” an official said, adding the exact number of names likely to be deleted after the digitisation of forms completed and uploaded on December 11 is 58.08 lakhs. Considering the fact that this figure was obtained at about 12 pm on Thursday, the total number of deletions could further go up beyond 60 lakhs, sources said.
The breakdown of the numbers till Wednesday was: 24,25 lakh deceased voters, 12.05 lakh voters who could not be traced, 19.93 lakh voters marked as ‘shifted’, 1,38 lakhs identified as bogus, and 57 lakh categorised under ‘others’. Sources in the Election Commission said that “a good number of names may fail the hearing session as there are a large number of people who have the same numbers or same parental names or addresses… the discrepancy is considerable,” adding one would not be surprised if the number goes beyond 50 lakhs more.
Incidentally, Bengal Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari had on several occasions said that there could be more than 1 to 1.5 crore fake voters in Bengal. “We are confident that there are more than 1 crore voters including Bangladeshi Muslims and Rohingyas in Bengal and they have been voting for the Trinamool Congress… these names have to be deleted,” he said on Thursday adding, “several lakh of them have still managed to creep into the voters’ lists with the help of the BDOs and booth level officers… we ask the ECI to catch these people and deport them to Bangladesh.”
Adhikari’s statement came hours after Bengal Chief Minister asked the “mothers and sisters of Bengal” to “remain prepared with your kitchen tools to resist the deletion of names from voters’ lists… because if a single name is deleted, I will descend on the street and hold a dharna with the help of the people.”
