Kolkata, Oct 27 (IANS) The dates for Special Intensive Revision (SIR) for states where Assembly polls are scheduled next year, including West Bengal, are expected to be announced by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday.

The ECI has convened a press conference at 4.30 p.m. at its headquarters in New Delhi, where the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) is likely to announce the names of the states where the exercise will be conducted in the immediate phase.

Although the SIR would be conducted nationally, as indicated by the ECI, in the immediate phase, the exercise would be held for those states where Assembly polls are scheduled next year. So, going by that pattern, it is expected that on Monday, the SIR dates would be announced for four states, namely West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Assam, since Assembly polls are scheduled in these states next year.

The SIR date for the Union Territory of Puducherry, where polls for the Legislative Assembly are also scheduled next year, is also likely to be announced on Monday.

The SIR has already been completed in the case of Bihar, where a two-phase Assembly poll is scheduled next month.

Unlike the other states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Assam, the SIR has been a controversial issue in West Bengal on multiple grounds since the beginning, with different political parties holding divergent views over the exercise.

The ruling Trinamool Congress is against the very idea of conducting the exercise and has been constantly claiming that SIR is an indirect ploy of the Union government and the BJP to slap NRC in West Bengal.

On the other hand, the BJP has claimed that the reason why the Trinamool Congress has been opposing SIR in West Bengal is their fear that the names of illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators would be deleted from the voters’ list.

The CPI(M)-led Left Front, though it is not principally against conducting the exercise, has claimed that the exercise should not result in the deletion of names of genuine voters from the voters’ list. In West Bengal, there have also been controversies over the appointments of booth-level officers (BLOs) and Electoral Registration Officers (EROs).

The last time the SIR was conducted in West Bengal was in 2002.

–IANS

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