EC brings down figure, says no dead or duplicate voters in 480 booths in Bengal till Dec 2

Kolkata, Dec 2 (PTI) The Election Commission on Tuesday revised the number of polling booths from which all distributed enumeration forms were returned during the SIR of electoral rolls, bringing the figure significantly down to 480 from the earlier 2,208.

This implies that there is not a single dead, duplicate or untraceable voter in any of these 480 booths, EC officials said.

West Bengal has a little over 78,000 booths, spread across 294 assembly constituencies.

An EC official told PTI that while District Electoral Officers (DEOs) had earlier reported 2,208 booths on December 1, a fresh verification following instructions from the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) revealed that the figure was only 480.

"Once we sought reports from the officials of districts on Monday and asked them to double check about the number of any dead, duplicate or untraceable voters. We received this revised figure on Tuesday noon," the official said.

The highest number of such booths is in South 24 Parganas district, with 159 booths, the official added, without specifying the figures for other districts.

He said 66 booths in the Raidighi area returned all duly filled forms, followed by 58 in Kulpi, 20 in Patharpratima, and 15 in Magrahat.

"The DEOs had sent the earlier dispatch as per initial assessment, but once the CEO's office asked for re-evaluating the figure based on all parameters, the number had lessened by 1,728. We have asked for a report about the role of data entry operators of the districts, particularly South 24 Parganas, to analyse the reason behind the disparity," he said.

The official clarified that the revised figure is final for the ongoing enumeration exercise till December 2, pending completion of work by several booth-level officers (BLOs).

Meanwhile, the EC said 7,65,75,328 forms were distributed till Tuesday evening, the 28th day of the SIR, launched on November 4, covering 99.92 per cent of the total electorate.

A total of 7,45,99,892 enumeration forms were digitally uploaded to date, representing 97.34 per cent of the total forms distributed and collected by BLOs.

The EC also announced that the distribution of enumeration forms will continue till December 11 instead of December 4, the draft electoral rolls will now be published on December 16 instead of December 9, and the final voters' list will be released on February 14, 2026, in place of February 7. PTI SUS NN