Bengal SIR: Uncertainty looms over extension of voters’ list hearings

Uncertainty continues to surround the extension of the deadline for hearings on claims and objections to the draft voters’ list in West Bengal, even as the process remains incomplete in around 15 assembly constituencies across three electoral districts.

While the stipulated deadline for hearings has ended, the chief electoral officer (CEO) of West Bengal, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, has sought a seven-day extension from the Election Commission of India (ECI). However, no response has yet been received from the ECI headquarters in New Delhi, officials said.

Sources in the CEO’s office said the confusion stems from two unresolved issues — whether the ECI will grant the extension at all, and if so, whether it will apply only to the 15 assembly constituencies where hearings are still pending or be extended across the entire state.

“If the ECI opts for a statewide extension, it will inevitably delay the publication of the final voters’ list, which is currently scheduled for 14 February,” a senior official said.

The constituencies where hearings are yet to be completed are largely concentrated in three electoral districts — minority-dominated Malda, coastal South 24-Parganas, and Kolkata Uttar.

Meanwhile, election officials have already identified more than 4 lakh voters as eligible for deletion from the final electoral roll after they failed to appear for hearings on claims and objections despite being served repeated notices.

Of these, around 50,000 are categorised as “unmapped” voters — those unable to establish a link with the 2002 electoral roll through either self-mapping or progeny mapping. The remaining approximately 3.5 lakh cases involve “logical discrepancies”, where anomalies were found in family-tree data during progeny mapping.

When the draft voters’ list was published in December 2025, as many as 58,20,899 names were deleted after being identified as deceased, shifted, or duplicated. The final number of deletions will become clear once the revised electoral roll is published on 14 February.

Following the publication, a full Bench of the ECI is expected to visit West Bengal to review the situation before announcing the polling schedule for the assembly elections.

Adding to the developments, a crucial hearing on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls is scheduled before a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court on Monday. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to raise the issue again, having previously argued the matter before the court on 4 February.

With IANS inputs