Ahead of Bengal polls, EC releases 2002 SIR data, signals rolls revision

Time of India

6 days ago

KOLKATA: The Election Commission on Monday published the 2002 special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bengal, tabling voter data of 11 districts covering 109 assembly segments.
The 23-year-old data — Bengal saw its last SIR in 2002 — was published under the heading "Electoral Roll of SIR 2002, (remaining ACs will be uploaded soon)".
Though the Bengal CEO's office did not make a formal comment, the move is largely seen as the first step before SIR rollout in Bengal. The districts covered on Monday included Cooch Behar. Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, North Dinajpur, South Dinajpur, Malda, Nadia, Howrah, Hooghly, Midnapore and Bankura.
The first general election after SIR 2002 in Bengal was the 2004 Lok Sabha polls with 4.7 crore voters. The Jan-Feb 2025 special summary revision put Bengal voters at 7.6 crore. Bengal goes to assembly polls in 2026.
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"This is an ongoing process. The electoral data of the remaining districts will be published on Tuesday, or at most in a couple of days," a senior EC official said, requesting anonymity.
The publication of the 2002 SIR data coincides with the state-wide training of booth level officers and their supervisors across Bengal districts.
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The process is likely to be completed this week.
On Monday, the state CEO's office also sought clarifications from three assistant returning officers (AROs) of Moyna (East Midnapore), Baruipur (South 24 Parganas) and Rajarhat (North 24 Parganas) over complaints of false voters in electoral rolls. The EC, prima facie, was unsatisfied with the reasons given by the AROs and asked them to appear again on Tuesday with proper documents.
EC officials dubbed the exercise as "routine".
Among the three seats, BJP won Moyna and Trinamool won Baruipur and Rajarhat. Bengal assembly speaker Biman Banerjee is the Baruipur MLA.
"Complaints from many more assembly segments have been received by EC. Those AROs will also be summoned for clarification over the week. The effort is to weed out false voters," the official said.
The ongoing hearing in the Supreme Court on the batch of petitions against the Bihar SIR includes TMC MP Mahua Moitra's SLP.
Moitra, in her petition, expressed apprehension that the SIR exercise would be replicated in Bengal from Aug 2025, "for which instructions have already been given to EROs". The SC will hear the case on Tuesday, but it has so far refused to stop the Bihar SIR process.
TMC has maintained that the SIR exercise will disenfranchise voters who were eligible to vote in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. It has argued that the SIR mirrored section 3 of the Citizenship Act, 1955, which deals with citizenship by birth, therefore making it an "NRC-like move" done not by the MHA but by the EC.
Bengal BJP has consistently demanded SIR, claiming lakhs of Rohingya and Bangladeshis have sneaked into the state's voter rolls.