Kolkata, Aug 4 (IANS) The 2002 Special Intensive Revision (SIR) voters’ lists for four Assembly constituencies in two districts of West Bengal are not available, an official from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO, West Bengal confirmed on Monday.
The 2002 SIR voters’ lists are the basis for the fresh SIR, the process for which has already been completed in the case of West Bengal’s neighbouring state of Bihar.
The assembly constituencies whose 2002 SIR voter lists are missing are Murarai, Rampurhat, and Rajnagar in Birbhum district and Kulpi in South 24 Parganas district.
However, the 2002 SIR voters’ lists of more than a hundred Assembly constituencies of Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, North Dinajpur, South Dinajpur, Malda, Nadia, Howrah, Hooghly, West Midnapore, and Bankura districts have been published on the website of the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal so far.
According to the official, the SIR voter list from 23 years back is supposed to be preserved.
“The search for the SIR voters’ lists for 2002 of those four Assembly constituencies is underway. The commission hopes that the list will be available soon. If the list is not available, then the draft voter list of 2003 will be published as an alternative,” he said.
It was learned that the office of the CEO in West Bengal, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, has instructed district magistrates of Birbhum and South 24 Parganas, who are also district electoral officers (CEOs) for the district concerned, to track the missing 2002 SIR voters’ lists at the earliest.
In West Bengal, the last SIR was conducted two decades ago in 2002. The official said that the Election Commission is moving forward to conduct another round of SIR based on that voter list.
The process of conducting SIR started with Bihar. ECI later said that the process will be carried out not only in Bihar but also in other states. Accordingly, ECO started publishing the 2002 SIT voters’ List. This list has already been published on the website of the state’s CEO.
So far, the poll panel has published the voter list of more than a hundred assembly constituencies in 11 districts. According to EC sources, the voter list of all the assembly constituencies in the remaining districts will be published by this week.
–IANS
sch/dan