Kolkata – The Election Commission of India (ECI) set a new cutoff for distributing the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, survey forms in West Bengal, and the deadline ends this Friday. About 70 million forms still need to reach voters.
The State Electoral Office says the pace of distribution since the start of the SIR on Nov 4 makes it easy to finish the remaining 70 million items by the last day of the extended deadline. By 8 p.m. on Thursday, officials had handed out 6.98 crore (about 91 percent) of the total of 7.66 crore registered voters in the state, the figure on the electoral roll dated Oct 27.
Initially, the deadline had been set for Nov 11. When 15 percent of voters had not received forms, the ECI pushed the cut‑off to Nov 14. Completing the SIR stage one means that West Bengal’s three‑stage revision, the first ever since 2002, is moving into its final months, slated for completion in March 2025.
Under the SIR, voters whose names or their parents’ names were missing from the 2002 voter list must submit one of 11 documents to stay on the roll. Those whose names were already listed must also present an ID from the same list of 11 documents.
Political pundits have been busy all year. Trinamool Congress (TMC) has blasted the SIR as a Union‑government scheme to trigger a National Register of Citizens (NRC) operation in the state. The BJP counters that TMC’s resistance stems from fear that illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya voters would be struck from the rolls.
So, as Friday approaches, West Bengal’s election officials are racing to hand out the final 70 million SIR forms, while parties continue to argue over the implications of America’s biggest electoral overhaul in the country.
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