After extensive back-and-forth throughout the day, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR )'s 'logical discrepancy' list finally reached the Election Commission's (EC) portal 'ECINet' on Saturday night. However, the list remained elusive to the majority of voters that day. This is because after the Commission's office in Delhi uploaded the list to the portal, the concerned District Election Officers (DEO), Electoral Registration Officers (ERO) or Booth Level Officers (BLO) would take printouts from there and arrange to display them at the gram panchayat, BDO, SDO, and municipal ward offices.
Additionally, arrangements would have to be made so that ordinary voters could check from the Commission's website whether their names were on the 'discrepancy' list, and if so, what caused this discrepancy. This too had not been uploaded to the website for ordinary voters by that night. The Supreme Court had ordered the Commission last Monday to publish Bengal's 'discrepancy' list publicly within three days.
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However, after the Supreme Court directive was uploaded to the website, the Commission took another day to issue a notification in this regard. Even then, as most voters could not see this list until late Saturday night, questions are being raised about when they will be able to see it. The Commission had announced that not only the 'logical discrepancy' list, but also the list of 'unmapped' voters would be displayed.
Today, Sunday, government offices are closed. Tomorrow, Monday, is also a government holiday for Republic Day. SIR hearings will remain closed that day. Therefore, Chief Election Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal of the state acknowledges that this list will not reach the public throughout the state before Tuesday.
Trinamool General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee has put the Commission in the dock over this delay. In the evening, he wrote on his X handle, "The Commission had announced that by Saturday, following the Supreme Court's directive, this list would be displayed publicly, including at gram panchayats and municipal ward offices. But it has not been displayed yet. So the question arises, what exactly is the Election Commission trying to hide? Why is it taking so much time for something that should take an hour to identify?"
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Although it was late at night when the 'discrepancy' list came from the Commission, reports suggest that lists had already been sporadically displayed at panchayat or municipal ward offices in some districts. For instance, SIR lists have been displayed in all six gram panchayats of the Chandrakona-2 block in West Midnapore. BDO Utpal Paik has informed that there are 20,533 people with 'logical discrepancy' and 'unmapped' status. Reports of lists being displayed have been received from the Bhangar-2 block in South 24 Parganas. Lists have reportedly been displayed in several places in Purulia as well.
However, officials at the CEO office are puzzled about how these lists were displayed in several places before the Commission sent the list. They report that in many cases, even the DEOs are unaware of the matter. Consequently, there are concerns about fresh confusion there as well.
According to Commission sources, the 'logical discrepancy' and 'unmapped' lists contain 1 crore 52 lakh names. Of these, there are 31 lakh 68 thousand 426 unmapped voters. The rest are all identified as 'logical discrepancy'. Hearings for 'unmapped' voters have already concluded. Hearings for those on the 'discrepancy' list are ongoing. In total, hearings for nearly 80 lakh people have been completed. They can also show documents within the next 10 days if necessary. Following the Supreme Court directive, hearings for the rest will also continue.
