Bengal SIR hearings: News clips among citizenship proofs

KOlkata: newsprint cuttings, dummy papers and division 8 allow cards ar some of the documents, which were submitted by people as proof of citizenship during the SIR hearings in West Bengal, senior Election Commission (EC) officials said.What has come as a major concern for the poll panel is that in several cases, these documents were marked as ‘verified’ by the District Election Officers (DEO) and uploaded on the poll panel’s database, in violation of the EC rules,[check] the officials said.“It was found that newspaper cuttings, hazy and illegible documents such as PAN and Aadhaar cards, Class 8 admit cards and even blank sheets of paper were submitted during hearing by people as proof of their citizenship. In several cases, the DEOs have even marked these documents as ‘verified’ and have uploaded them on the ERONET. This is gross violation,” said a senior EC official in Kolkata.Around 15.1 million people, including those who could not be mapped with the 2002 electoral roll and those with logical discrepancies, were called for hearing. The hearing process took off from December 17, 2025 a day after the ECI published the draft electoral roll in West Bengal.The issue was flagged during a virtual meeting held by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, with the poll panel officials in Kolkata, roll observers appointed by the EC in the state and DEOs of all districts on Thursday.A senior official, who attended the meeting said, the ECI pulled up some of the DEOs in West Bengal during the meeting. The ECI has warned the officers of stringent action if the errors aren’t rectified, the official added.“The DEOs’ job is to verify the documents before they are uploaded. How can they upload newspaper cuttings, blank papers and Class 8 certificates as proof of a person’s citizenship? DEOs have been asked to rectify the errors by 5pm on Monday, failing which they may face stringent actions by the EC,” said the official.There are a set of documents listed by the poll panel, such as passport, birth certificate, identity cards issued to its employees and pensioners by the government, matriculation and educational certificates issued by boards and universities, caste certificate and forest right certificate among others, which one needs to produce during the hearing as proof of citizenship.Poll panel officials said that the hearing process of 15.1 million people has already been completed and around 12.3 million cases have already been verified. February 14 is the last date for uploading documents. While around 5.8 million names of absent, shifted, dead and duplicate voters were struck off in the draft roll published in December, another 140,000 people have already been found to be ineligible to be included in the final roll after the hearing process. The number is likely to rise further, an official said.“Over the next seven days, verification of the documents would be done. From February 21, the observers would start the ‘super-checking’ before the final electoral roll is published on February 28. A team of senior officials of the ECI is likely to come to Kolkata in the first two days of March to take stock of the preparations for the upcoming polls,” said the official.The state assembly elections are likely to be held in April this year. The ECI may announce the dates in March.“The ECI also warned in the meeting that since the data was being stored in the poll panel’s data base, DEOs, EROs and AEROs might face action even years later if such errors were spotted in the future. The digital trail would lead to the person concerned and he wont be able to evade responsibility,” said an official.Meanwhile the ECI summoned the state’s chief secretary Nandini Chakravorty to New Delhi on Friday over non-compliance with various directions the poll panel issued in the past few months. The EC had sent a letter to the state government earlier this month flagging non-compliance with at least five directions issued by the poll panel. It had even set a deadline of February 9 to comply.