ECI flags technical issue in 2002 rolls, halts hearings for unmapped electors in Bengal

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has issued fresh instructions to district election officials in West Bengal, directing that voters marked as “unmapped” in the BLO app due to technical issues linked to the digitisation of the 2002 electoral rolls during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise should not be called for hearings, even if such notices have been auto-generated by the system.

The directive, issued by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, stated that the issue has arisen due to incomplete conversion of the PDF version of the 2002 electoral rolls, the last SIR conducted in the state, into CSV format, leading to linkage failures in the booth-level officer (BLO) app for a number of electors.

It said that despite being marked as “unmapped” in the system, many such electors have valid self or progeny linkage with the hard copy of the 2002 electoral rolls, duly authenticated by district election officers (DEOs) and published on the CEO’s website.

The CEO;s office said that hearing notices generated automatically in such cases need not be served and should be retained at the level of the electoral registration officer (ERO) or assistant electoral registration officer (AERO).

As per the instructions, extracts of the 2002 electoral rolls may be forwarded to the DEO concerned for verification in accordance with the guidelines of the Election Commission. Upon verification, EROs or AEROs may take an appropriate decision and upload the necessary documents for the disposal of the cases.

The directive also allows BLOs to be deputed for field verification, including taking photographs of the electors concerned for uploading in the system.

“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.

However, it clarified that in cases where discrepancies are detected at a later stage, either during scrutiny of the hard copy of the 2002 electoral rolls or upon receipt of complaints, the electors concerned may be called for hearings after due serving of notices.

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.