SIR hearings end in West Bengal; final rolls to be out on Feb 28

Mamata Banerjee led massive protests throughout West Bengal, arguing that the SIR will lead to mass disenfranchisement of voters. File pic/Getty Images

The hearing for "logical discrepancy" cases in the SIR exercise concluded across West Bengal on Saturday, an EC official said, adding that the final electoral rolls are scheduled to be published on February 28.

The hearings, which addressed omissions and inconsistencies in name spellings, began on December 27 and continued across the state at camps set up in schools, club rooms and administrative buildings.

"The poll officials will now scrutinise documents till February 21, and the final electoral rolls are slated for publication on February 28," the official said.

Any pending data for Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) must be uploaded by Monday. During the enumeration exercise, around 58 lakh names (deceased/duplicate/shifted voters) were referred as fit for omission and kept out of the draft electoral rolls published in December.

The last date of publication of the final electoral rolls was February 14, which was later extended by the EC to February 28. The official did not spell out the final number of names to be excluded, but said most of these people did not turn up at the hearing sessions despite being served repeated notices.

58L
Number of voter names deemed fit for omission

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