Bengal’s SIR hearing woes continue as voters line up at centres

Three months into the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process in West Bengal, there are still long queues outside hearing centres as lakhs of electors wait to respond to what the Election Commission (EC) terms “logical discrepancies” in the electoral roll. 

With the draft electoral roll scheduled to be published on February 14, the hearings are required to conclude by February 7, as per the stipulated deadlines. Officials say this has added to the pressure at hearing centres, where hundreds of voters are being called each day. Both voters and election officials are racing against time, amid widespread confusion over surname variations, clerical errors and automated system-generated notices. 

Common surnames

Common Bengali surnames like Bandhopadhyay, Chattopadhyay and Gangopadhyay were anglicised over time to Banerjee, Chatterjee, and Ganguly. However, lakhs have received hearing notices for these. The issue was recently flagged by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the Supreme Court. 

“My grandfather and father used the Chattopadhyay surname because places like Calcutta University and government schools in Bengal for the longest time did not recognise ‘Chatterjee’ as a surname. But we have always used it. Yet both my sister and I have gotten hearing notices,” said a voter from south Kolkata who did not want to be named. Lakhs like her are facing the same issue. 

Minor errors in names like Kumar shortened to Kr or Ray as Roy, Mallick as Mallik have caused immense harassment, as many are still running pillar to post to find documents to prove that these people are one and the same. 

“We do not wish to harass anyone. We also know that Kr and Kumar are the same and Chattopadhyay and Chatterjee are the same. But the hearing notices have been system-generated. Once someone gets a notice, they have to appear for the hearing,” a senior officer who has been involved in the hearing process told The Hindu. 

Age gaps

In some cases, age gaps within families have also raised red flags. A 30-year-old Sriparna Ghosh got a hearing notice because her age difference from her father was 54 years.  

Standing outside the Sree Jain Swetamber Terapanthi Vidalaya in north Kolkata, M. Bhatti said all their siblings were called for hearings. 

“We have all the necessary documents. We will show whatever they need. Our father had six children,” Mr. Bhatti added. 

This issue has been raised by both the Congress and the Trinamool Congress. West Bengal Congress president Subhankar Sarkar flagged the ‘arbitrary’ threshold setting by the EC and pointed out that the number of electors with six or more electors linked to them as children stood at 2,06,056, whereas, if the threshold is raised to 10, the number was only 8,682. 

Syed Shahab Alam, a 58-year-old man who has spent all his life in the civil defence and served the nation, came out of the hearing centre at Sree Jain Swetamber Terapanthi Vidalaya and waits for his daughter to turn up. He submitted 14 documents to prove that the wrong father’s name on his daughter’s birth certificate is a clerical error and not a fake voter issue. 

“They wrote my name as Mohammad Shahab Alam in my daughter’s birth certificate. When a small child is born people are more worried about well being of the child and mother. Who cared to check the names,” Mr. Alam said. However, since he served as a Booth Level Officer till 2024, it made him familiar with the electoral process and hence kept the records intact. 

After the completion of the first phase of the SIR, about 58 lakh names were deleted in West Bengal, bringing the number of electors in the State to 7.08 crore from 7.66 crore. About 1.36 crore such notices of logical discrepancies have been issued. The Supreme Court directed that the list of logical discrepancies be made public, but the lists still remain inaccessible and are only available to the Electoral Roll Officers.