47,000 of 23.27 lakh enumeration forms yet to reach voters in West Burdwan
The Statesman | 18 November 2025
Till yesterday evening, 22.8 lakh enumeration forms of the total 23.27 lakh have been distributed in West Burdwan district under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls process by the Election Commission of India.
Booth Level Officers (BLOs) began distributing these forms door-to-door from 4 November. Now, the district administration is placing emphasis on ensuring that all distributed forms, duly filled up, are collected on time by the BLOs during their second round of door-to-door visits. This SIR process of distribution and collection of filled up enumeration forms will continue till 4 December.
Yesterday, West Burdwan district magistrate and District Election Officer (DEO), S Ponnambalam, and Asansol Sadar Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM–Sadar) Biswajit Bhattacharya, visited the Railpar Balbodhan School area under Asansol North Assembly constituency, as well as the Dhemoman area under the Kulti Assembly constituency.
They interacted with local residents and BLOs regarding the distribution and collection of enumeration forms. Booth Level Agents (BLA) were also present during the visits. The district officials have appealed to the eligible voting public to fill up the forms as per the Election Commission of India guidelines and submit them to the BLOs as soon as possible.
According to the officials, several important tasks remain for the BLOs after the forms are submitted, which will require time. Therefore, special focus is currently being given to speeding up the entire form collection process.
Meanwhile, the former MLA of Kulti and vice-chairman of Asansol Durgapur Development Authority (ADDA), Ujjal Chatterjee, organised a huge rally of the Trinamul Congress in Kulti to protest the ongoing SIR process. The former MLA had lost to the BJP candidate Dr Ajoy Poddar by a wafer-thin margin of 679 votes in the 2021 Assembly polls.
The TMC is trying to regain the Kulti seat in the 2026 Assembly polls, but now political observers feel that after the SIR process, a very tough contest awaits the seat. Chatterjee had won the Kulti Assembly elections in 2006, 2011 and 2016.