SIR in Bengal: Details of 43 lakh dead voters already locked in ECI database
Kolkata: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has locked in its database the details of the 43 lakh dead voters in West Bengal whose names continue to figure in the state’s electoral roll as on October 27.
Sources in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said that of this figure of 43 lakh, the ECI has obtained details of around 34 lakh dead voters from the Aadhaar database.
The details of around 11 lakh dead voters were obtained from the list of beneficiaries of different welfare scheme in West Bengal like the widow pension schemes and Samobathi Prakalpa, among others, with the latter being a financial assistance scheme from the state government that provides a one-time grant of Rs 2,000 to poor families to help cover the costs of performing rites and rituals for a deceased person.
The figure is bound to increase further first in the draft voters’ list and subsequently in the final voters’ list after detailed evaluation of the enumeration forms collected, the sources in the CEO’s office said.
The total number of electors in West Bengal as on October 27 is 7,66,37,529. The first stage of the three-stage SIR in West Bengal, the distribution of enumeration forms by booth-level officers, began on November 4, and the process is expected to be completed by Friday.
The entire SIR process is expected to be completed with the publication of the final voters’ list by March 2026, just a couple of months before West Bengal is scheduled to go to the polls.
The last time the SIR was conducted in West Bengal was in 2002. The 2002 voters’ list has been taken as the base for the current and ongoing revision exercise.
Trinamool Congress had already filed a petition at the Calcutta High Court questioning why the 2002 voters’ list had been taken as the base for the current revision exercise.