SIR in Bengal: Why has Election Commission paused hearings for ‘unmapped’ voters in poll-bound state?

SIR in Bengal: The Election Commission of India (ECI), in a fresh set of instructions, has asked district election officials (DEOs) in West Bengal to not summon for hearings those voters identified as ‘unmapped.’ The pause applies only to voters flagged as not found by the EC’s central software but were found present on the hard copies of the 2002 rolls.

The instructions came amid a volley of criticism against the poll body in the poll-bound West Bengal over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral roll.

A letter by the Additional Chief Electoral Officer (ACEO), West Bengal to all DEOs on 27 December said though hearing notices may have been generated from the system for such cases, these electors should not be called for hearing or hearing notices so generated in such cases need not be served, and instead be kept with the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO)/Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO).

Why the sudden pause?

What is the cause of the pause?

Officials have explained that when the poll authorities working on the ground checked the hard copies of the 2002 rolls, they noticed that voters or their children shown as ‘unmapped’ on the EC’s software were present. The pause does not apply to ‘unmapped’ cases flagged by EROs after on-ground verification.

The current term of the 294-member West Bengal assembly is till the first week of May 2026.

SIR in Bengal: Draft List Published on 16 Dec

The poll panel's 27 October SIR instructions had asked voters to fill forms and trace themselves or a family member to the electoral roll of the last intensive revision, held in 2002 in West Bengal.

Basically, the voters were required to be ‘mapped’ to the 2002 electoral roll, either through their own presence or that of a relative on that roll, to continue as voters in future

On 16 December, the Election Commission published West Bengal's draft electoral rolls following SIR, deleting the names of more than 58 lakh voters on various grounds, including death and migration, and redrawing voter profiles across districts and border belts ahead of the 2026 assembly polls.

The scale, spread and political geography of the deletions have affected several high-profile assembly seats, and have sharpened political fault lines and set the stage for a contentious verification phase ahead of state elections due in less than six months.

Who are unmapped voters?

In addition to the deleted voters, the poll panel's software also flagged another 32 lakh electors for not being found on the 2002 rolls as ‘unmapped’. These ‘unmapped’ voters, as per centrally generated notices, had to prove their eligibility through a personal appearance in order to remain voters.

The hearings for such ‘unmapped’ voters started in West Bengal on 27 December.

The EC's letter quoted by media, however, explains that the extract of the Electoral Roll 2002 may be sent to the DEO concerned for verification as per EC guidelines and after being verified by the DEOs, the ERO or AERO “may take a call and upload the document for disposing the cases”.

The Trinamool Congress on 27 December submitted a memorandum objecting to the “system-generated” notices.

On the same day, the Additional CEO of Bengal asked all District Election Officers to stop calling voters for hearings if their names were flagged as ‘unmapped’ with the 2002 rolls. This despite the system having generated notices for the SIR.

Marked ‘unmapped’ on PDF of 2002 roll

Many voters were marked as ‘unmapped’ because the PDF file of the 2002 electoral roll had not been fully converted to CSV, or plain text format, as per the letter.

As a result, the BLO App —meant for the use of EC’s Booth Level Officers — could not fetch linkage for a number of voters, even as they or their children could be traced on the hard-copy of the 2002 rolls authenticated by the DEOs and published on the CEO’s website.

Bengal SIR

According to official data published on 16 December, 58,20,898 names have been excluded from the draft rolls in West Bengal, reducing the state's electorate from 7.66 crore to 7.08 crore following the conduct of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise from November 4 to December 11.

A detailed breakup released earlier showed that 24,16,852 voters were marked as dead, 19,88,076 as permanently shifted, and 12,20,038 as missing or untraceable.

Another 1.38 lakh voters were identified as having duplicate entries, while 1,83,328 names were flagged as so-called 'ghost' voters. Over 57,000 names were deleted under other discrepancies detected during enumeration.

(With agency inputs)