Jalpaiguri: Fear surrounding the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process has triggered unprecedented crowds at the Birth and Death Registration department of Jalpaiguri Municipality. Worried that their names may be removed from the voter list, residents are spending entire nights outside the municipal office to collect decades-old death certificates of relatives—documents that have suddenly become crucial for voter verification.
From Huslurdanga’s Rakhi Sinha to Saptibari’s Rafikul Islam and Jalpaiguri town’s Sujan Hazra, people have been arriving as early as 3 am. Many say a father’s death certificate is now essential to establish voter identity under the SIR process, making the document indispensable for families.
The Birth and Death Certificate department staff members are manually searching old registers for records, but the office can process only about 20 applications a day between 11 am and 5 pm. To secure a spot within this limited quota, residents themselves are forming queues through the night.
For some, the sudden need has been overwhelming. Rakhi Sinha’s father died in 1991 at Jalpaiguri District Hospital, but her family never required his death certificate for any official work. Now, SIR verification has made it essential, prompting her and her brother to line up from dawn.
Jalpaiguri resident Sujan Hazra queued up to collect the death certificate of his friend, Amal Roy, as Roy’s family needs it for SIR documentation. The family had never obtained the certificate before, but the current voter list revision has made it urgent. Rafikul Islam of Saptibari faced similar difficulties. “My father is no longer alive. My name wasn’t in the 2002 voter list, but it appears in the current one. So my father’s death certificate has become extremely important to ensure my name stays on the list.
That’s why I reached at 3:30 am,” he said. Municipal staff are working with the office door half-shut to control the crowd. In some cases, applicants are even helping staff sift through old registers to speed up the search. Clerk Kalidas Sarkar said: “Things were normal until the SIR process began. Around 40 people come daily, but we can issue only about 20 certificates because tracing old records takes time. I am shocked that people are standing in line all night.”