Overview
- Hearings at Farakka were suspended after the BDO office was ransacked during a BLO sit-in, with around 200 BLOs submitting resignations and police registering an FIR that led to two arrests.
- TMC MLA Monirul Islam was accused locally of leading the Farakka protest but said it was a public outburst against alleged targeting of minorities, as officials reported injuries to an AERO and damage to property.
- The EC has begun issuing centrally generated notices for ‘logical discrepancies’, including cases where more than six electors list the same parent, directing recipients to produce one of 13 specified documents at hearings.
- Officials reported 58 lakh deletions in the December 16 draft roll, about 94–95 lakh voters flagged for discrepancy checks, and roughly 32 lakh ‘unmapped’ voters called for hearings, with more than 10% not appearing and many attendees bringing invalid documents.
- To meet a February 7 hearing deadline, the EC is adding AEROs, deploying about 2,000 more micro-observers, expanding hearing centres, and offering an online portal for migrants to upload required documents, as political tensions rise with TMC alleging mass deletions and the BJP warning against obstructing SIR.