Million SIR hearings pending in Bengal days before deadline expiry: CEO Agarwal

ONe zillion hearings related to to the on-going Special Intensive revisal (SIR) of the electoral undulate were pending in poll-bound West Bengal, chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal has said, insisting the process was likely to be completed within the February 7 (Saturday) deadline.“The total number of voters called for hearings in the state was around 15 million. This includes unmapped voters and those with logical discrepancies. Only around one million hearings were pending as of Wednesday,” Agarwal said.The comments came on the day Mamata Banerjee became the first sitting chief minister to personally argue her own petition before the Supreme Court, urging it to “protect democracy” and “people’s lives”, as the court sought a response from the Election Commission of India (ECI) on withdrawing notices to millions of people over minor spelling variations and dialect-based discrepancies during the SIR.In Kolkata, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) said that nearly 6.3 million hearings were pending. It maintained that it was almost impossible to complete the process as the deadline expires within days.A second poll official said the hearing process is expected to be completed by Saturday.SIR was rolled out in the state on November 4. The draft roll was published on December 16, and around 5.8 million voters were identified as absent, shifted, dead, or duplicate. Notices were sent to around 3.2 million voters who could be linked with the 2002 electoral roll based on the last SIR in the state. They were also sent to another 13.6 million voters whose enumeration forms showed logical discrepancies.In a statement, the TMC said 8.8 million hearings have taken place since December 16 at a rate of around 180,000 daily. It added nearly 6.3 million hearings remain pending, necessitating an impossible 1.5 million hearings daily. The final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on February 14 ahead of the assembly elections.State minister Shashi Panja, who was part of a TMC delegation that met Agarwal on Wednesday, said apart from the 15 million unmapped voters and those with logical discrepancies, who are being called for hearings, documents of another 50 million voters are being reverified. “What is the objective? These are being done by micro-observers who have been appointed. This cannot go on.”The ECI is likely to announce the poll dates in February, and elections are expected to be held in April. It has separately rejected the West Bengal government’s request to exempt some bureaucrats, including home secretary Jagdish Prasad Meena, and top police officers from the state from poll duty as observers in other states where assembly elections are due this year.