1.5 million Bangladeshi voters stuck for lack of electronic signatures

KOLKATA: Judicial officials have disposed of 3.7 million “outstanding” voter cases in Bengal, but only 2.2 million people’s names appear in the two supplementary electoral rolls and about 1.5 million cases remain unaccounted for lack of electronic signatures.The EC announced the third list on Saturday evening but did not specify the number listed. An EU official said that additional lists will be released daily in the future.

Election Commission officials said 6 million voters were initially flagged for scrutiny following the special enhanced revision (SIR) of the rolls, and more than 700 judicial officers were assigned to review them. As of the evening of March 23, approximately 2.9 million cases had been cleared. Bengal CEO Manoj Agarwal said the names with electronic signatures before 5 pm will be published in the first supplementary list. There were about 1 million names on the list released around midnight.

The gap in the second list still exists. Officials said 3.7 million cases had been processed as of Friday evening, suggesting the remaining 2.7 million should appear in the next publication. However, the list only shows 1.2 million names. “We received 1.2 million cases with electronic signatures and issued them accordingly,” a senior European Commission official said on Saturday, but did not offer an explanation for the absence of electronic signatures on the remaining 1.5 million cleared cases.An EC source said the digital signature feature was introduced in the adjudication software after several officials had already processed a designated portion of the case. The cases will be referred back to officials.