Kolkata, March 16 – The judicial review process has been completed for almost one-third of the cases referred under the "logical discrepancy" category during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal said on Monday.
Addressing journalists in Kolkata, Agarwal said that over 60 lakh cases had been referred for judicial review, and the process has so far been completed for around 20 lakh cases.
He expressed confidence that, given the current pace of review, the entire exercise is expected to be completed soon.
However, the CEO did not specify how many of the 20 lakh cases processed so far had been found eligible for deletion from the electoral rolls.
The final voter list in West Bengal was published on February 28, excluding those cases that had been referred for judicial review.
Supplementary lists will be published based on the progress of the review exercise.
The first supplementary list in this regard is expected to be published during the current month.
According to officials, the final electoral roll published on February 28 excluded about 63 lakh names after they were identified as "deceased", "duplicate", "shifted" or "missing" voters.
In addition, a total of 60,06,675 cases were referred for judicial review.
The review process is being conducted by 732 judicial officers, including around 100 each from neighboring Odisha and Jharkhand.
Officials said that the officers are working around the clock to complete the exercise as soon as possible.
The highest number of cases referred for judicial review came from the two minority-dominated and Bangladesh-bordering districts of Murshidabad and Malda.
The number of such cases was also high in North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas districts, which also share international borders with Bangladesh.
The two-phase Assembly elections in West Bengal will be held on April 23 and April 29.
Polling will be conducted for 152 constituencies in the first phase and for 142 constituencies in the second phase.
