About 95 per cent of voters in the state have already received their enumeration forms as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls. However, Election Commission sources said nearly 30 per cent of voters in 36 urban Assembly constituencies were still “untraceable.” Booth Level Officers (BLOs) visited the listed addresses three times but failed to locate them. On Thursday night, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal held a virtual meeting with district election officials and Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to find out why the rate of form distribution was so low in these pockets. This has raised the question: could some of these “missing” voters actually be phantom voters?
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Sources say district officials identified three major reasons behind the disappearance of voters in these areas. One category includes slum dwellers. Over the past few years, many slums and shanties in cities have been demolished to make way for high-rises. The original residents have shifted elsewhere, and the BLOs were unable to obtain their new addresses, making form distribution impossible. Another group is that of longstanding tenants in urban neighbourhoods. Most of them have shifted out of their houses on rent, and no landlord or neighbour knew where they had shifted. BLOs visited such houses three times but could not trace the voters, so the forms could not be delivered. This has created difficulties for the field staff.
The problem has cropped up in areas such as Siliguri in North Bengal, Asansol in West Burdwan, Birbhum, Howrah, North Kolkata and several Assembly segments in North and South 24 Parganas. The CEO’s office said that many voters of Alipurduar have shifted to Assam. In Kharagpur, officials could not find a large number of residents living in railway colony quarters, as many had stayed there because of their jobs but had shifted after retirement or on transfer.
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Since the distribution rate in several constituencies has fallen below 75 per cent, the Commission instructed the CEO to hold meetings with the concerned districts. The CEO has directed BLOs to clearly record in their app cases where voters could not be traced. After the forms are submitted, the draft electoral roll will show whose names are missing. Those left out may apply till January 9 by submitting Form 6 along with the required SIR documents.
