Kolkata, March 25 (IANS) The Election Commission of India (ECI), on Wednesday evening, informed that of the 60 lakh cases classified under the “logical discrepancy” category, the judicial adjudication process has been completed for 32 lakh cases till Tuesday night by the judicial officer appointed for the process.

This means that the process of having been completed for roughly 53 per cent of the total cases referred for judicial adjudication in the state, informed an insider from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal.

Again, out of the 32 lakh cases for which the judicial adjudication process has been completed till Tuesday night, roughly around 28.8 lakh (40 per cent) have been found excludable.

However, these voters who have been found excludable will have the chance to approach any one of the 19 Appellate Tribunals constituted for that purpose.

Currently, the judicial adjudication process is being conducted by over 700 judicial officers, including 100 each from neighbouring Odisha and Jharkhand.

To recall, the final voters’ list in West Bengal, minus those 60 lakh odd cases which were referred for judicial adjudication, was published on February 28, where a total of 63,66,952 names were already deleted.

Now, with around 12.80 lakhs being found excludable in the course of judicial adjudication, the total deleted names as on Tuesday night stand at around 77 lakh.

Before the notification of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was issued for West Bengal in November last year, the total number of voters in West Bengal stood at 7,66,37,529. In the draft voters list published in December last year, a total of 58,20,899 names were deleted. In the final voters list published on February 2828, the deletion figure increased to 63,66,952.

Even on Wednesday, while addressing an election rally in North Bengal, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the ECI of unnecessarily harassing the people of the state through this revision exercise. She also accused the Commission of specially targeting people from the tribal and backward class communities in the name of the SIR.

–IANS

src/uk