Kolkata: After much wait and anticipation, the first supplementary voter list was finally uploaded on the websites of the Election Commission of India (ECI) and West Bengal CEO at around 11:55 pm on Monday. The list provides Assembly-wise details of adjudicated cases, along with the names of voters who have been excluded.
However, the problem with downloading the list persisted until the paper went to print.
Earlier, Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal stated on Monday that, as of late afternoon, 29 lakh adjudications have been completed out of the 60 lakh cases placed under judicial review. Agarwal had also told reporters earlier that the supplementary list will be released around 9.30 pm on Monday.
“Centralised processing of the list is going on in the office of the apex poll body in Delhi, as the server is located there. We have no such server here. Once we receive the list, we will upload it in the website of our office,” Agarwal had said in the evening.
The CEO had informed that adjudication of all the cases has been completed in the districts, namely Kalimpong, Jhargram, Purulia, and Bankura. The judicial officers from these districts have been diverted to those places where cases are high. The move is expected to fast-track the list of cases ‘under adjudication’.
The hard copy of the supplementary list will also be published at the office of the district electoral officers (DEOs) and will also be made available to the Electoral Registration Officer, SDO and BDO level ,informed an official in the state CEO office.
The total number of voters in the state, as per the final electoral roll published on February 28, stood at 7,04,59,284, while over 60 lakh voters were placed under judicial review. The earlier draft roll had included 7,08,16,630 names.
The Election Commission on Monday removed 73 Returning Officers (ROs). Most of them are Sub-Divisional Officers (SDOs) .
The state comprises 294 Assembly constituencies, and typically, there is one RO assigned to each Assembly segment. Of these, 73 have been removed, the majority of whom are Sub-Divisional Officers (SDOs).
According to the directive issued by the poll body, new SDOs have been appointed in Tufanganj (Cooch Behar), Jalpaiguri, Malda Sadar, Lalbagh (Murshidabad), Barrackpore, Bidhannagar, Barasat, Canning, Baruipur, Alipore, Howrah Sadar, Hooghly Sadar, Tamluk, Kanthi, Haldia, Egra, Ghatal, Durgapur, and Asansol.
Last Wednesday, the Commission issued a directive announcing the appointment of new District Magistrates in 11 districts of the state. The list included Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, North Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, East Burdwan, the two 24-Parganas districts, Darjeeling, and Alipurduar.
According to the CEO’s office, the SIR exercise in Bengal was announced on October 27 last year, when the electorate stood at 7,66,37,529. Following the enumeration phase, a draft roll was published on December 16, which recorded the deletion of 58,20,899 names, bringing the total down to 7,08,16,630.