The hearing phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process is currently underway in East Midnapore district to address informational inconsistencies and logical discrepancies in the voter list. According to district election department sources, more than four lakh hearings have already been completed. The data entry work related to these hearings is expected to be finished by February 7. However, around 3,000 voters are yet to appear for the hearings.
District administration sources said that during the statewide voter list review, informational errors and logical discrepancies were identified in the cases of nearly five lakh voters in East Midnapore across two phases. Notices were issued to all such voters, asking them to attend hearings.
Through this process, names of deceased, relocated, missing, and duplicate voters are being removed, and necessary corrections are being made to the electoral rolls.
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The exercise is being carried out across 4,420 polling booths in the district’s 16 Assembly constituencies. Officials said that after the draft voter list was published on December 16, around 1,41,936 voters’ names were found to be excluded. This included approximately 46,000 no-mapping voters dating back to 2002.
In the first phase of the SIR process, non-mapping voters were verified separately through hearings. The second phase focused on voters with informational inconsistencies or logical discrepancies and saw a strong response across the district. However, during the initial phase, there were instances of anger and protests in several blocks as voters had to wait for long hours to complete the hearing process.
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To manage the situation, the administration increased the number of hearing tables. While there were initially 165 hearing tables across the district, more than 100 additional tables were later set up to ease congestion and speed up the process.
The rate of table increase was highest, particularly in the Nandigram assembly area. As a result, the hearing process is now progressing much faster, according to election department sources.
District Magistrate Yunis Rishin Ismail said, "Combining both phases, nearly five lakh hearings have been held. Data entry work is also progressing rapidly. We hope all data entry will be completed by February 7. The number of absences at hearings is around three thousand."
