Kolkata: The EC aims at completing the hearing of all 3,168,424 unmapped voters in Bengal by Jan 5-6, 2026, with about 3 lakh hearings a day, an official said. The hearing for unmapped voters will start on Dec 27 in many Assembly constituencies across the state, and within a couple of days, the exercise will be expanded to all 294 Assembly segments. Until Tuesday evening, the EC generated close to 20 lakh hearing notices.
"In the first phase, our target is to conclude the hearing of all unmapped voters in the state in 10-11 days, starting from Dec 27. We plan close to 3 lakh hearings a day, and going by this rate, the target is very much achievable," a senior EC official said.
In the second phase, the commission will issue hearing notices to approximately 14,000,000 voters whose enumeration forms were found with one of seven types of logical discrepancies.
According to the commission's plan, in every Assembly constituency, one ERO and 10 AEROs will be entrusted with the responsibilities of conducting the hearing exercise. If the situation demands, the EC will deploy additional AEROs to conclude the hearings by Jan 5-6.
"Primarily, we plan to arrange 11 rooms — one for ERO and 10 for AEROs on an average in every Assembly constituency for the hearing exercise. In every room, hearings of 150 unmapped voters will be conducted, which means 1,650 hearings a day in an Assembly constituency on average. We are open to increasing the number of AEROs to expedite the hearing process," another commission official elaborated.
The commission deployed 294 EROs — one for each Assembly constituency — and 3,059 AEROs in Bengal's SIR exercise, which started on Nov 4. In addition, the EC recently approved a proposal from West Bengal's chief electoral officer to appoint 2,800 additional AEROs. The additional AEROs will be on reserve, and according to the requirements, the CEO will deploy them. The CEO also appointed close to 4,600 micro-observers who will remain present in the hearing proceedings of the SIR and monitor the work of the EROs and AEROs.
"For the hearings, we plan to deploy one micro observer per room, which means 11 micro observers will be present in the hearing process on average in an Assembly constituency. However, in the Assembly constituencies where the number of unmapped voters is significantly higher, the number of hearing rooms, AEROs, and micro-observers will go up to 15," the second official said.
When asked about the apprehension that the final roll publication may be deferred from the scheduled date, which is Feb 14, 2026, a senior EC official said: "We have enough manpower and other resources to complete all the hearings in 20 days. There is only a four-day delay in commencing the hearing process."