In Kolkata, officials say that the names on the current voter rolls for Assembly seats don’t match the 2002 list. They’re in the middle of digitising the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) forms that were gathered from voters. By Wednesday afternoon, they had spotted over two and a half million voters whose names or their parents’ names differ from the 2002 records. The discrepancy is especially pronounced in seats such as Kolkata Port, Kasba and the Sonarpur (both South and North), Behala (East and West), Rajarhat‑NewTown, and Rajarhat Gopalpur—all located within Kolkata and the neighboring North and South 24 Parganas districts. Similar gaps appear in West Burdwan and the border districts of Nadia and Murshidabad. As of October 27, West Bengal’s electoral roll lists 766,375,29 voters in total, and by Wednesday the digitisation team had processed roughly five crore SIR forms. A clearer picture will emerge on December 9 when the draft voters’ list is released. Under SIR rules, anyone whose name—or their parents’ name—appears in the 2002 roll automatically qualifies as a voter. Those whose names are absent must present one of the eleven acceptable identity documents outlined by the Election Commission. Although the Supreme Court order added Aadhaar as a twelfth option, the Commission clarified that voters who submit an Aadhaar card must still provide an additional document from the original eleven. The West Bengal SIR began on November 4 and is slated to finish by the end of March next year, the first time the state has undertaken this exercise since 2002.
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