Kolkata, March 27 (IANS) The second supplementary list for judicial adjudication cases in West Bengal will be published on Friday, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has informed.

By Thursday night, the judicial adjudication process had been completed for 36 lakh voters, which is around 60 per cent of the 60 lakh cases referred for judicial adjudication, informed sources in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal.

Although the ECI is yet to specify the exact time when the second supplementary list will be available first on its website and subsequently on the website of the CEO’s office, in all possibilities the same might happen around midnight as it happened in the case of the first supplementary list, which was published at midnight of March 23, said the CEO’s office insider.

It is also not yet clear whether the second supplementary list will have the names of those cleared up to Thursday night, or whether it will also contain the names cleared and processed up to Friday evening.

To recall, the final voters’ list in West Bengal, minus the 60 lakh cases referred for judicial adjudication, was published on February 28. It was decided then that supplementary lists would be published as per the progress of the judicial adjudication.

The voters whose names would be found excludable by the judicial officers involved in the adjudication process would have the chance to approach any of the 19 Appellate Tribunals constituted for the purpose.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has already announced that Trinamool Congress would provide legal support to those whose names are deleted during judicial adjudication and even arrange counsel for them in the matter.

Before the notification of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was issued for West Bengal in November last year, the total number of voters in the state 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 28, the deletion figure increased to 63,66,952.

After the first supplementary was published around midnight on March 23, information surfaced that the number of deleted voters had increased to roughly 77 lakh.

Meanwhile, the ECI on Thursday night informed that it had decided to replace 14 additional returning officers for 14 Assembly constituencies scattered over nine districts in the state.

Earlier in the week, the ECI replaced 73 returning officers.

The two-phase Assembly election in West Bengal is scheduled on April 23 and April 29. In the first phase, polling will be held for 152 Assembly seats, and in the second phase, voting will take place in the remaining 142 constituencies. The results will be published on May 4.

–IANS

src/dpb