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Kolkata: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has admitted that many people in West Bengal could not be linked to the base 2002 voter roll during Special Intensive Revision (SIR) due to technical glitches in the app. It was observed that the number of so-called uncapped voters could fall as a result.
It may be noted the number of people who were unable to show their names or names of their parents or grandparents stood at around 3.1 million in 2002 SIR list that was published in December. The number is different from 5.82 million names, which were dropped from the draft list.
“It has been reported from the districts that due to incomplete conversion of the PDF of the 2002 electoral roll data to CSV, linkage could not be fetched in the BLO app in respect of many electors. These electors are marked unmapped, though they have either self or progeny linkage with the hard copy of the 2002 electoral roll as authenticated and provided by the District Election Officer (DEOs) and published on the website of the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal (WBCEO),” the letter sent by the EC to all district electoral officers on Saturday said.
The EC's admission has sparked a political war of words in the state. Speaking to Hindustan Times, Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Arup Chakraborty said that the commission is working on the orders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Accusing the EC further, he said that while the BJP asked it to delete around 15 million voters, the commission called it a technical glitch when it got exposed.
Hitting back at the TMC, the BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya said that while the commission was doing its job, the political parties must assist the commission. He added that while the voter list is being cleaned up, anyone may approach the EC in case unhappy, and then further move the Supreme Court.
