KOLKATA: About 35% to 40% of the 3.2 million cases of “logical inconsistency” under the Special Intensive Review (SIR) decided by judicial officials in West Bengal by Wednesday have been deleted from the electoral roll list, senior Election Commission officials said.
In all, more than six million voter claims were sent to judicial officials appointed by the Calcutta High Court for adjudication. EC officials said about 2.9 million cases had been decided by judicial officers as of March 23.
A senior official said that only about a million names had been uploaded in the first supplementary list published late on Monday evening. The release of voters, near midnight, was followed by widespread chaos as people reported technical glitches, including a failure to upload the list, and every voter in the state was marked as “under segregation” for a few hours.
The European Commission has not yet provided consolidated figures for the number of people who failed to be adjudicated in the first supplementary list.
Also Read: SIR conducted smoothly in all states, except Bengal: SC
The poll committee is likely to publish a second supplementary list on Friday. EC officials said the poll committee had approached the Calcutta High Court so that the supplementary lists could be published daily.
“Of the 3.2 million cases decided as of Tuesday night, about 35-40% names have been deleted. About one million names, electronically signed by judicial officials, have been uploaded in the first supplementary list released on March 23,” a senior EC official said.
This deletion comes in addition to the 6.18 million names already deleted from the final electoral list published on February 28. Meanwhile, the ruling Trinamool Congress and its arch-rival BJP have intensified their attacks against each other over SIR and deletion of names.
“Yesterday, every voter in the electoral list was suddenly sent for adjudication. I checked my name in the voter list and found that it was also under adjudication,” Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said while addressing a political rally in Naxalbari in North Bengal. Banerjee said she heard that about 800,000 names were dropped from the first supplementary list.
Also Read: Confusion surrounds first SIR supplementary list in West Bengal
However, the European Commission explained that there were some technical errors and that the poll committee’s website had been temporarily hacked.
“Our website was hacked yesterday. There were some technical glitches. It has been resolved and it is working now. One can check their names now,” Manoj Kumar Agarwal, West Bengal’s chief electoral officer, told reporters on Wednesday.
“They are now saying that their site has been hacked. Did anyone have the courage to hack the European Commission’s website? Was it a hack or technical malice? I have told people about it,” Banerjee said.
Senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari said around 7.9 million “fake” names have been removed from the state’s electoral rolls after the SIR, while claiming that this will help the BJP secure more than 177 seats in the upcoming elections. He added that of the 3.2 million voters who were prosecuted, about 1.4 million names were deleted.
“So far, 7.9 million names have been removed from the tainted voter list. About 90 per cent of these fake voters were casting their votes for the TMC,” Adhikari said while addressing a rally in East Midnapore.
