Kolkata, Feb 19 (IANS) With just three days left for the deadline for scrutiny of voters’ documents submitted during the hearing sessions on claims and objections on the draft voters’ list to expire, around 20 lakh voters’ documents are pending re-verification from the side of the District Magistrates, who are also the District Eelectoral Officers (DEOs).
Sources in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said that the majority of these documents that are pending re-verification from the side of the DEOs are “logical discrepancy” cases.
“The micro-observers noticed abnormalities in the case of these documents during the ongoing scrutiny phases. In such cases, the documents submitted by the concerned voters did not match the 13 documents mandated by the Election Commission of India as authentic identity documents. Based on the recommendations of the micro-observers, these documents were returned to the DEOs for re-verification. The Commission had also directed the DEOs concerned to complete the re-verification process and report back to the Commission at the earliest,” sources in the CEO’s office said.
At the same time, the CEO’s office sources added, around 1.14 lakh voters’ documents submitted during the hearing sessions are yet to be uploaded in the system, and hence, the scrutiny process for these documents is yet to be started.
“In view of these two developments, it is doubtful whether the deadline of completing the scrutiny process by February 21 would be met or not. Possibilities are high that the deadline for completing the scrutiny process might have to be extended again, and if that happens, the date of publishing the final voters’ list might have to be postponed again,” said the sources in CEO’s office.
As per the current schedule, the final voters’ list is scheduled to be published on February 28, which was earlier fixed on February 14.
On March 1, the full bench of the Commission is supposed to arrive in West Bengal for a two-day visit to take stock of the situation in the post-SIR scenario. Soon after that, the Commission is expected to announce the polling dates for the crucial Assembly elections in West Bengal scheduled later this year.
This time, the Commission is planning to conduct the polls in a much smaller number of phases than what they were in the last few elections. The CEO’s office had already recommended a single-phase poll, while maintaining that the final decision in the matter will be taken by the Commission.
The last time a single-phase poll was conducted in West Bengal was in the 2001.
–IANS
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