Sun Dec 28 09:05:16 UTC 2025: News Article:

West Bengal Election Officials Told to Halt Hearings for “Unmapped” Voters Amid Electoral Roll Revision

Kolkata, December 28, 2025 – The Election Commission of India (ECI) has issued a directive instructing district election officials in West Bengal to refrain from calling “unmapped” voters for hearings during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Electoral Rolls-2026. The issue arises from technical glitches during the digitisation of the 2002 electoral rolls, leading to some voters being incorrectly flagged as “unmapped” in the Booth Level Officer (BLO) app.

According to the ECI, the incomplete conversion of the 2002 electoral rolls’ PDF version to CSV format has caused linkage failures in the BLO app for a number of electors. However, many of these “unmapped” electors possess valid linkages in hard copies of the 2002 rolls, authenticated by district election officers.

The directive clarifies that auto-generated hearing notices for these cases should be retained at the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) level. Instead of immediate hearings, the ECI has instructed officials to verify the voters’ information against extracts of the 2002 electoral rolls, potentially involving field verification and photograph uploads by BLOs.

“This directive might be for the time being. If it is felt that hearings are at all required in some cases, that will be done only after a proper verification,” an official told PTI.

While immediate hearings are suspended, the ECI maintains that discrepancies discovered later during scrutiny or upon receiving complaints will still warrant hearings, preceded by proper notice. The instructions have been circulated to all DEOs as part of the ongoing SIR exercise in West Bengal to ensure accuracy of electoral rolls while addressing technical limitations in legacy data integration.

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