Tuesday will mark the second stage of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in West Bengal with the publication of the draft voters’ list by the Election Commission.
The SIR exercise began on November 4 with the enumeration phase, in which the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) carried out door-to-door survey of distributing forms.
The second phase of claims, objections, and hearings is likely to continue until February next year.
According to the EC schedule, the hearings will start on Wednesday, the day after the draft roll is published.
Here are the answers to the frequently asked questions about the hearing and complaint phase.
According to the EC, those who have not been mapped with the 2002 SIR list will be called for a hearing. “The electors who are neither in the 2002 electoral roll nor have any relatives in that roll will be labelled by the Election Commission as “unmapped”. They will be called for a hearing where they will have to furnish documents to prove that they are a legitimate voter.
EC sources said that all the forms will be analysed with their software, and the information provided by the electors will be studied.
“Based on that, it will be decided if that person will be called for the hearing or not,” said an official.
Electors who are in the 2002 list or have mentioned a blood relation in those electoral rolls need not furnish any documentary proof during the verification and hearing phase of the SIR.
Many irregularities, however, have surfaced in the latter category where those in the 2025 voters’ list, who don’t appear in the 2002 electoral roll, have linked themselves to the 2002 voters by stating them as their parents, but these links contradict the parental names listed in their current 2025 records.
A senior EC official said, “Our experts have already analysed submissions with progeny mapping, during which we got many dubious results. These forms are now subject to verification.”
According to the Chief Electoral Office (CEO), there is no parameter to identify from the draft electoral roll as to who will be called for a hearing. “The Election Commission will call voters for a hearing by issuing a notice, which will be auto-generated. The notices will be served at the residence of the voter, and the date, time, and venue will be mentioned,” an EC official said.
“We will not mark the names of such voters in the draft electoral roll nor share the information they gave in the enumeration form, which is questionable,” the official added.
According to the EC, centres will be set up at the Block Development Office (BDO), Sub-Divisional Office (SDO) in respective constituencies.
One Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and 10 Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) will be deputed for the hearing in each constituency.
A senior official said, “Preliminary hearing centres will be constituted in the BDO and SDO offices. If the number of hearings increases, the adjacent offices of the state government will be hired for the hearing.”
According to the EC schedule, the hearings will be conducted till February 7 next year, following which the final electoral list will be published on February 14.
“Earlier, it was decided that 50 hearings would be conducted per day. After seeing the huge number of hearings, the Commission decided that at least 100 hearings would be conducted per day to complete the hearings by February 7”.