Final West Bengal electoral roll likely to be published on February 28: CEO

West Bengal’s final electoral roll after the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is likely to be published on February 28, the state’s chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal said on Monday.

“We are trying our level best so that approval of the ECI (Election Commission of India) is obtained for allowing publication of the final electoral roll by February 28,” Agarwal said.

The remarks came hours after the Supreme Court on Monday directed ECI to extend “by at least one week” the February 14 deadline for publication of Bengal’s final electoral roll.

A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, justice Joymalya Bagchi and justice NV Anjaria directed ECI to extend the deadline from February 14, the scheduled date for publication of the final list, to allow officials to streamline the process, ensure proper scrutiny of claims and objections raised by voters, and to address apprehensions expressed by the petitioners, including West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

SIR was rolled out in the state on November 4, while the draft roll was published on December 16 with around 5.8 million names of absent, shifted, dead and duplicate voters removed from the list.

Around 15.2 million voters who could not be linked with the 2002 electoral roll (last SIR) or had logical discrepancies in the enumeration forms were called for hearing. Till date around 13.9 million hearings have already been held.

While February 7 was scheduled to be the last date of hearing and the final electoral roll was scheduled to be published on February 14, the CEO had written to ECI on Saturday to extend the hearing by a week. Poll panel officials said at the time that if the hearing date was extended till February 14, it would push the date for the publication of the final roll to February 21.

Assembly elections in the state are likely to be held in April this year as the entire poll process has to be wrapped up by the first week of May.

The result of the last assembly elections in the state was announced of May 2, 2021. Mamata Banerjee took oath as the chief minister of the state, for the third time in a row on May 5, 2021.