Only 1,468 Voters’ Names Restored Before Last Phase of WB Polls
Election Commission of India acts after court push
Kolkata: A day before the final phase of Assembly elections in West Bengal, the Election Commission (EC) restored the names of only 1,468 deleted voters in the electoral rolls after getting approval from the appellate tribunals, headed by 19 retired judges, following a renewed push by the Supreme Court to the Calcutta High Court recently.
EC officials appeared to be in the dark about how many cases are still pending for either ‘addition’ or ‘deletion’ from the tally of around 27.16 lakh voters who were marked ‘ineligible' among a total deletions of around 90.83 lakhs in the special intensive revision of the EC in the state.
The 1,468 names were uploaded on the website of the Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal early on Tuesday but were not made public. According to the EC officials, these ‘added’ voters can check their status with their EPIC numbers in their respective constituencies after clicking on the ‘Appellate Tribunal Supplementary List No 2’ on the poll panel’s website and can exercise their franchise on Wednesday.
Most of the 1,468 ‘added’ names are from Kolkata. While 677 are in South Kolkata, 596 are in North Kolkata, followed by 77 in Howrah, 39 in Nadia, 34 in North 24 Parganas, 30 in South 24 Parganas, 8 in Burdwan East and 7 in Hooghly.
The EC officials also disclosed that names of another six voters, who were supposed to cast ballots on Wednesday, were deleted by the appellate tribunals. Why they were dropped remains a secret.
The fate of the lakhs of pending cases remained unknown since the restoration of only 1,468 voters' names reflected yet another instance of a very slow pace in sorting them out. Earlier, the EC was able to restore only 139 deleted names in the state voters' list and axed eight others after they were cleared by the appellate tribunals from a tally of 657 applications resolved, only a day before the first phase of the polls on April 23.
