Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi

New Delhi, Mar 5: The Indian National Congress unit in West Bengal on Thursday urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to announce the state Assembly election schedule only after all pending cases related to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls are resolved.

In a memorandum submitted to the poll body, the party demanded that the adjudication process concerning more than 60 lakh voters be completed before the election dates are declared.

Addressing a press conference, Congress leaders said the revised voter list for West Bengal, published on February 28 following directions from the Supreme Court of India, contains 7,04,59,284 voters. Of these, 60,06,675 voters — around 8.5 per cent — have been marked for adjudication.

Among those present at the briefing were party leaders Ghulam Ahmad Mir, Subhankar Sarkar, Isha Khan Choudhury, Prasenjit Bose, Ashutosh Chatterjee, B. P. Singh and Gorkha leader Munish Tamang.

The leaders raised concerns about discrepancies during the SIR exercise. They noted that although 9.64 lakh Form-6 and Form-6A applications for voter inclusion were received during the claims and objections period, only 1.82 lakh were accepted, implying the rejection of about 7.82 lakh applications.

At the same time, they pointed out that while around 99,000 Form-7 applications were submitted to remove names from the electoral rolls, more than 5.46 lakh voters were deleted. According to the party, this suggests that approximately 4.47 lakh additional Form-7 applications were processed after the claims and objections period had ended.

The Congress also cited a February 24 order of the Supreme Court directing that supplementary voter lists be published once the pending exercise is completed. Given the scale of the process, the party said the adjudication could take several weeks.

Referring to provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, the leaders noted that Section 24 allows voters excluded by Electoral Registration Officers to appeal before district election officers and the Chief Electoral Officer. However, they added that Section 23 prohibits inclusion in the electoral roll after the last date for filing nominations in an election.

The party has also urged the Election Commission to issue clear guidelines on the appeal and re-enrolment process for voters who may have been wrongly excluded.

Additionally, the Congress pointed out that similar SIR exercises in Bihar and Tamil Nadu saw significantly higher additions than deletions of voters, and asked the poll body to conduct a fresh verification of all Form-6 and Form-7 applications before finalising the voter list for West Bengal.