EC halts hearing notices for ‘unmapped’ voters in Bengal over 2002 roll digitisation glitches

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday, directed district electoral officers (DEOs) to not issue notices to voters identified as “unmapped” in the BLO app due to technical issues linked to the digitisation of the 2002 electoral rolls during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in West Bengal. More than 32 lakh voters in the state, who could not trace themselves, their parents, or grandparents in the 2002 electoral rolls have been asked to appear before hearings that commenced from December 27.However, the Election Commission clarified that hearings have been paused for a specific category of voters whose names were not traced by the Commission’s central software system but were found in the hard copies of the 2002 electoral rolls. The pause does not apply to genuinely “unmapped” cases flagged by electoral registration officers (EROs) after on-ground verification.According to sources in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal, “Though hearing notices may have been generated from the central software system for such cases, these electors should not be called for hearing or hearing notices so generated in such cases need not be served, and instead be kept with the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO)/Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO).”The EC’s fresh instructions, issued through the CEO’s office, explained that the problem stemmed from technical limitations during the digitisation of the 2002 electoral rolls. The rolls, originally available in PDF format, were not fully converted into CSV files, resulting in linkage failures in the Booth-Level Officer (BLO) app.As a result, several electors were incorrectly marked as “unmapped” in the system, even though they had valid self or progeny linkage with the physical copies of the 2002 rolls, which had already been authenticated by DEOs and published on the CEO’s website.



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