Kolkata, Dec 23: Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) in West Bengal will begin issuing hearing notices from Thursday as the next phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls gets underway, an official said.
At the initial stage, notices are likely to be issued to around 32 lakh “unmapped” voters—those whose details could not be linked with the 2002 SIR data but whose names appear in the draft electoral rolls for 2026.
“Being included in the draft electoral rolls does not necessarily mean a voter will not be called for a hearing, though the process in such cases may be comparatively simpler,” the official said. The issuance of hearing notices will begin from the morning of December 18.
Two copies of each notice will be issued—one to be handed over to the voter concerned, and the other to be retained by the Booth Level Officer (BLO) after obtaining the voter’s signature. Voters will be given time to appear for hearings, which are expected to begin shortly thereafter. The hearings will be conducted at government offices, including those of district magistrates, sub-divisional magistrates and block development officers.
The official said the screening of cases involving “logical discrepancies” is currently underway, and the final number of voters to be called for hearings is yet to be determined. Voters have been advised to keep ready the 11 documents specified by the Election Commission for verification.
Meanwhile, the state’s Special Roll Observer, Subrata Gupta, is likely to visit north Bengal ahead of Christmas to review the progress of the SIR process. “The visit is aimed at assessing the implementation and pace of work in the region,” another official said.
The Election Commission (EC) is focusing particularly on bordering districts of the state, where a higher number of logical discrepancies have been identified. On December 16, the EC published the draft electoral rolls, in which the number of voters decreased from 7.66 crore to 7.08 crore following the deletion of over 58 lakh names.
According to EC sources, seven categories of logical discrepancies have been identified. These include cases where an elector’s father is shown as having more than six children, mismatches in the father’s name, age gaps of less than 15 years or more than 50 years between electors and their parents, an age gap of less than 40 years between electors and their grandfathers, enrolment after the age of 45, and gender mismatches.
“Data analysis shows that such discrepancies are more prevalent in bordering districts such as Malda, Murshidabad, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas and Nadia. A majority of voters with such discrepancies will be called for hearings,” an EC official said, adding that hearings are expected to begin after Christmas, from December 27.
Soth parganas has the highest number of cases where the age gap between electors and parents is less than 15 years (1,39,702), followed by North 24 Parganas (92,951), Nadia (64,114), Murshidabad (63,148) and Malda (44,920). In cases where the age gap exceeds 50 years, South 24 Parganas again tops the list with 1,09,567 cases, followed by Murshidabad (88,014), North 24 Parganas (77,476), Malda (54,704) and Nadia (49,410).
“We expect a higher volume of hearings in districts such as South and North 24 Parganas, Murshidabad, Malda, Nadia, and North and South Dinajpur. Accordingly, more hearings per day will be conducted in these districts by January 31,” a senior EC official said. BLOs have been instructed to scrutinise the data thoroughly, and any errors must be rectified by block development officers within seven days of the publication of the electoral rolls, the official added.
Officials from the office of the State Chief Electoral Officer said around 32 lakh unmapped voters will be called in the first phase of hearings. Notices to about 10 lakh such voters have already begun, while notices to the remaining 22 lakh voters will be issued in phases, with hearings scheduled to commence from December 27.
