Kolkata, Dec 12 (IANS) With the enumeration phase of the three-stage Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal complete, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has identified 58 lakh excludable voters from the current voters’ list.

As per figures available from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), based on the trend of digitisation of the duly filled enumeration forms collected by the booth-level officers (BLOs) from voters till Thursday night, a total of 58,08,232 voters have been found as excludable.

Out of them, 24,18,699 are deceased voters. The total number of shifted voters, that is, voters who have moved elsewhere, is 19 93,087. The rest are duplicate voters, that is, voters having names at two places, and also the voters who are found suitable for exclusion for other reasons.

The total number of voters as per the current list as of October 27, 2025, is 7,66,37,529. The SIR exercise started on November 4. The draft voters’ list will be published on December 16. The final voters’ list will be published on February 14, which will end the first stage of the three-stage SIR exercise.

Thereafter, the ECI will start the second phase of the revision exercise, which will basically involve filing claims and objections, and the notice phase — which is issuance, hearing, verification, and decision on enumeration forms and disposal of claims and objections — to be done concurrently by the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs).

After the second stage is over, the third and final stage, which is the publication of the final electoral roll, will be on February 14. Soon after the publication of the final electoral roll, the ECI is expected to announce the dates for the crucial Assembly elections in the state.

The ECI has decided to hand over the separate lists of excludable voters to the booth-level agents (BLAs) of all the political parties in the state that are registered with it.

This decision of the ECI to hand over the separate list to the BLAs of different political parties is aimed at bringing transparency in the process of hearing on claims and objections that will happen in the second stage of the SIR exercise

–IANS

src/dpb