Kolkata, November 4 (Udaipur Kiran): The Election Commission of India (ECI) has launched the first phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in West Bengal from Tuesday. During the initial “mapping and matching” process, only 32.06 percent of names in the current voter list were found to match with those from the 2002 electoral roll, which has been taken as the base for the current revision.

A senior official from the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said that the present voter list contains around 7.66 crore names, out of which fewer than 2.46 crore voters were found to have their or their parents’ names in the 2002 list. The official added that these figures may change as the verification continues.

Under the prescribed provisions, voters whose names or their parents’ names appear in the 2002 list will be considered automatically valid. They will only need to submit a filled enumeration form without additional documents. However, those not found in the 2002 list will be required to produce one of the documents approved by the Election Commission.

Although Aadhaar has been included among acceptable documents, the Commission has clarified that it cannot serve as proof of citizenship or age and, therefore, cannot be treated as a standalone identity document for validation.

The SIR process will be conducted in three phases. In the first phase, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) will visit households to collect voter information, followed by the publication of the draft electoral roll. The second phase will allow political parties and voters to file objections or corrections. In the final phase, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) will resolve all claims and publish the final electoral roll.

The entire revision process is expected to be completed by March 2026, ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections scheduled next year in West Bengal, along with three other states and one Union Territory.