Kolkata, Dec. 2 -- The Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday informed that over 47.06 lakh names have not matched so far with the voter list of 2002, based on the current pace of digitising enumeration forms submitted by booth-level officers (BLOs).

According to sources in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, among these 47.06 lakh names, the number of dead voters accounts for 22.45 lakh, 6.76 lakh are untraceable, over 16.53 lakh have shifted out of their registered addresses, while 1.07 lakh have been identified as bogus voters. The Commission has made it clear that this is an evolving estimate, since the projection reflects the digitisation status only till Tuesday (4 pm); the exclusion figure may rise as more forms are processed. Bengal's electorate, according to the roll updated on October 27, stands at 7,66,37,529.

"The tally of untraceable voters could shift as some individuals may be located during verification," said an EC official. Over 97.34 per cent of the enumeration forms have already been digitised in the state, amounting to 7,45,99,892.

In another major development, 480 polling booths in the state have been identified with not a single 'uncollectable' form reported.

Interestingly, 2,208 polling booths were recorded with 100 per cent distribution, collection and digitisation of SIR forms on Monday.

The CEO office had sought signed reports from EROs, countersigned by district electoral officers (DEO), by 10 am on Tuesday after such a huge number of booths were identified with not a single uncollectable form reported. The figure implied that in these booths, every voter was accounted for-with no deaths, no duplicates, no permanently shifted electors and no untraceable voters reflected in the forms.

According to fresh reports by the DEOs, out of the 480 booths, the majority are in South 24-Parganas-Raidighi 66, Kulpi 58, Mograhat 15 and Patharpratima 23.

On Monday, the poll panel identified 7,844 polling booths where digitisation was completed with between zero and 10 uncollectable forms and the most startling cluster was the set of 2,208 booths that reported zero uncollectable entries. For the remaining 5,636 booths, the count of uncollectable forms ranges from 1 to 10, and DEOs were instructed to reverify the entire SIR process and forward their findings to the CEO, West Bengal.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.