Election Commission raises technical issue in 2002 rolls, stops hearing of ‘unmapped’ voters in Bengal

The Election Commission has issued fresh instructions to District Election Officers in West Bengal, directing that voters marked as “unmapped” in the BLO app due to technical issues associated with the digitization of the 2002 voter list during the ongoing SIR exercise should not be called for hearing, even if such notices are automatically generated by the system.

A directive issued by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal on Saturday said the issue has arisen due to incomplete conversion of the PDF version of the 2002 voter list, the last Special Intensive Revision (SIR) conducted in the state, into CSV format, due to which the linkage in the booth-level officer (BLO) app has failed for many voters.

It said that despite being marked as “unmapped” in the system, many such voters have valid self or progeny link with the hard copy of the 2002 voter list, duly certified by the District Election Officers (DEOs) and published on the website of the CEO.

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The CEO office said that in such cases the automatically generated hearing notice is not required to be served and the same should be maintained at the level of Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) or Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO).

As per the instructions, extracts of the voter list of 2002 may be sent to the concerned DEO for verification as per the guidelines of the Election Commission. After verification, the ERO or ERO can take appropriate decision and upload the necessary documents for disposal of the cases.

The instructions also allow BLOs to be deputed for field verification, including taking photographs of the concerned voters for uploading in the system.

“This instruction may be for the time being,” an official told PTI. If it is felt that there is a need for hearing in some cases, it will be done only after proper verification.

However, it was clarified that in cases where discrepancies are detected at a later stage, either during scrutiny of the hard copy of the 2002 voter list or on receipt of complaints, the voters concerned may be called for hearing after proper service of notice.

Instructions have been circulated to all DEOs as part of the ongoing SIR exercise in West Bengal to ensure accuracy of voter rolls while addressing technical limitations in legacy data integration.