EC bars hearing notices for unmapped voters in Bengal; disallows party BLAs at SIR hearings
KOLKATA: The Election Commission of India (ECI), on Monday, directed district magistrates (DMs), who have been assigned for the ongoing Special Intensive Revisions (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal as district electoral officers (DEOs) across the state, not to issue notices for hearings to voters identified as unmapped. More than 32 lakh voters who could not trace themselves, their parents, or grandparents in the electoral rolls during the last SIR in 2002 in Bengal have been asked to appear before the hearings, which kicked off on and from December 27. The national poll body paused the hearings only for voters who were not found by its central software system but were figured in the hard copies of the 2002 electoral rolls. However, the pause does not apply to unmapped cases flagged by electoral registration officers (EROs) after on-ground verification. According to sources in the office of the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal, Though hearing notices may have been generated from the central software system for such cases, these electors should not be called for hearing or hearing notices so generated in such cases need not be served, and instead be kept with the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO)/Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO). Officials explained that when poll authorities working on the ground checked the hard copies of the 2002 electoral rolls, they noticed that voters or their children shown as unmapped on the ECs software were present in the physical records. On the other hand, in another significant development, the ECI on Monday decided not to allow Booth Level Agents-2 (BLAs-2) of political parties inside the venue of hearings. The Commission was prompted to take this step after Trinamool Congress MLA Asit Majumder allegedly stopped the hearing process in his Chinsurah constituency in Hooghly district on Monday, demanding the entry of a BLA-2 inside the venue. He reportedly got involved in a heated exchange with the concerned block development officer (BDO) over the issue. On Sunday, TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, had asked party BLAs to remain inside camps during hearings. He also threatened legal action if BLAs were not allowed during the hearings. Asit Majumder said BLAs-2 are meant to assist voters if they face problems during SIR hearings. I demanded that a BLA-2 should be allowed inside the camp so that no genuine voters name is deleted from the electoral rolls during hearings, he said.
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