Wrong spellings, age mismatch galore on draft rolls
Times of India | 17 December 2025
Kolkata: From spelling mistakes to age mismatch and, in some cases, incorrect EPIC number, the draft roll released by the EC on Tuesday was not short of errors.
"My brother's name is Avibasu Banerjee, but in the draft roll, his name is printed as Avi Basu. Basu is being treated as a surname, which is wrong," said Somlata Mukherjee, a resident of New Alipore. A Behala resident pointed at a gross mismatch in the spelling of his deceased father's name. "The name, ‘Swapan', has been turned into Swapna, and in Bengali, the name has been spelt in an even weirder manner. I don't know where I need to go to solve these problems. Do I need to apply afresh?" said Tanima Chowdhury.
A section of BLOs stated that even though they changed the spellings of several electors and uploaded their current photos on the BLO App, there was no reflection of their work on the draft SIR list. "I checked the draft SIR list and found the changes I made till late into the night are not reflecting. Electors whose wrong spellings or errors in surnames still exist in the draft SIR roll called me. There is a misunderstanding that I did not rectify their name errors," said a Tollygunge BLO.
A senior EC official said, "The draft SIR did not have any provision for changing name errors or photos. Rather, the enumeration forms were collected for voters' verification whose names are mentioned on the electoral roll. The voters need to fill Form 8 for corrections and submit."
BLOs said they were ready for the complaint calls as they could see the draft roll before it being made public.
"I have been receiving calls since morning. Voters can rectify spellings online themselves. For others, I will get them corrected," said Subhadeep Ghosh, a BLO in Maheshtala.
Sumedha Bhattacharya, a BLO in Sovabazar, said the most glaring discrepancies were in age, fathers' names and photos. "A mother and daughter's age gap shows 15 years, but they justified it by saying her mother got married early," she said.