West Bengal’s Chief Electoral Officer, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, has said that ECI will publish the first supplementary voter list under the SIR process today. This list will feature names of voters whose documents have been fully verified and are pending in the adjudication list.
Election Commission sources said that 27 lakh pending voter records have been settled, with about 2 lakh names processed daily. Once the list is out and if they have any objection, then the voters can appeal both online via the ECI Net app or the commission’s website and offline at district or sub-divisional offices.
To prevent any untoward incident after publication of the list, the state government has issued directives to district magistrates, directing them to take crowd-control measures. Copies of the directive have also been sent to the state police chief and the Kolkata Police Commissioner.
Following the Supreme Court’s directives, 19 appeal tribunals have been set up across 23 districts, staffed by former judges of the High Court. Voters whose names are excluded from the supplementary list will be able to appeal through these tribunals.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has accused the Chief Minister of being responsible for complications in the SIR process, alleging that she is politicising the issue of voter exclusions.
