Kolkata, Feb. 8 -- West Bengal chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal on Saturday urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to extend the final date of hearing under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state by seven days, citing delays in completion of hearings, verification, and data uploading. February 7 was the last date of hearing while the final electoral roll was scheduled to be published on February 14. Assembly elections in the state are likely to be held in April. "We have received certain proposals from some District Election Officers regarding extension of the deadline. After compilation and examination of data from the districts, we have requested the Election Commission of India to extend the last date (of hearing) from February 7 to February 14," CEO told reporters. "I have appealed to extend the last date of hearing for seven days after receiving inputs from seven to eight district election officers. In some places, the process of hearing is yet to be over, while in others uploading, verification, and final decisions by the AEROs and EROs are still pending." A senior poll panel official in Kolkata said that as the last date of the hearing process was likely to be extended, the date for the publication of the final electoral roll will also be extended by at least a week from February 14 to February 21. The development comes a day after the ECI extended by a month the deadline for filing claims and objections in the ongoing SIR of electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh - the fourth extension given during the SIR process in India's most-populous state, where nearly every fifth voter is facing the risk of deletion from the rolls and roughly 32.6 million hearings are scheduled. Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls in early 2027. In West Bengal, two extensions have been given so far. SIR was rolled out in the state on November 4 while the draft roll, in which 5.8 million names of absent, dead, shifted and duplicate voters were deleted, was published on December 16 following which the hearing process started. Around 15 million electors, who couldn't be linked with the 2002 electoral roll when the last SIR was held in the state and those with logical discrepancies, were called for hearing. Sources in the EC said that around 5,00,000 electors didn't appear for the hearing process. Their names are also likely to be struck off in the final roll. "While around 97% of the hearings have been completed, 75%-80% of the data have been uploaded. Verification for around 70%-80% of the cases have been completed," Agarwal said. People aware of the developments in the poll panel said that the list of constituencies where the hearing process was yet to be completed are spread over the districts of North Kolkata, South Kolkata, South 24 Parganas, Darjeeling, North 24 Parganas and Howrah. Reacting to the development, TMC leader Kunal Ghosh said: "There are long queues of electors at hearing centres. Voters are being harassed. The BJP and the ECI have turned the SIR process into a joke..." Union minister Sukanta Majumdar said: "What can the BJP say about this? Let the final electoral roll be published first. BJP will make its stand clear later."...