Kolkata, Nov 16 (IANS) The Election Commission of India (ECI) has set a target for completing the digitisation process of the voters’ details mentioned in the enumeration forms in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal by November end.

“Already, the process of digitisation of the enumeration forms collected by booth-level officers had started, and digitisation had already been completed for around 50 lakh enumeration forms. The pace of digitisation work will increase from Sunday and is expected to be completed by the month’s end as directed by the commission,” sources in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said.

On Saturday evening, West Bengal CEO Manoj Kumar Agarwal attended an urgent meeting with the District Magistrates, who are also the District Electoral Officers and their subordinate electoral officers in the districts, during which the deadline was set.

The meeting was also attended virtually by the top ECI officials from New Delhi.

Meanwhile, a four-member central ECI team will visit West Bengal to review the ongoing SIR, which started on November 4.

The four members of the team will include the Deputy Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Bharti, two principal secretaries of ECI, S B Joshi and Malay Mallick, and the deputy secretary, Abhinav Agarwal.

They will reach Kolkata on November 18 and will be in the state till November 21. During the visit, the team would like to review the SIR progress in Kolkata, South 24 Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad, and Malda.

The second West Bengal visit of the central ECI team to review the revision exercise indicates that the poll panel’s special focus was on the progress of SIR in the state.

Earlier this month, a central ECI team, led by Bharti, visited West Bengal after enumeration forms distribution began on November 4.

During the three-day visit earlier this month, the central team reviewed the SIR progress in four districts in North Bengal.

The first stage of the three-stage SIR in West Bengal started on November 4. The entire process is expected to be completed by March next year. The last time the SIR was conducted in West Bengal was in 2002.

–IANS

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