Differently abled voters need to queue up for SIR hearings in West Bengal despite ECI directives

Thirty-nine-year-old Arpita Banerjee, a resident of Baranagar in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, has been battling multiple health problems since childhood, exacerbated by neurological disorders.

Born in November 1987, Ms. Banerjee had been on the earlier 2025 voter list and was included in the post-Special Intensive Revision (SIR) draft electoral rolls published in December last year. Soon after, however, she received a notice to attend a hearing over a “logical discrepancy” arising from a mismatch in the spelling of the surname “Banerjee” in her and her father’s records.

Her 76-year-old father, a small-time businessman, accompanied her to the hearing, where they had to wait for a good three hours before officials clicked her photograph and accepted her disability certificate as documentary evidence, as mandated under SIR rules. The experience, however, has left her traumatised.

Similar difficulties have been reported by other voters with disabilities. Lokman Sheikh, a person with visual disability from Raghunathganj Assembly Constituency under Murshidabad district, had to wait in the queue during his hearing, with no separate facility for people like him, despite being called over a “logical discrepancy” in his name.

The parent of a non-verbal autistic boy from Kolkata, who did not wish to be identified, said they had to wait for nearly five hours in a queue with their son for the SIR hearing, triggering severe anxiety in the child.

According to the Election Commission of India data, West Bengal had 5,07,089 registered voters with disabilities in the 2024 electoral rolls used for the Lok Sabha elections. The ECI provides a home voting facility for voters with disabilities.

During the SIR of electoral rolls in West Bengal, the ECI issued directives on January 7, exempting certain categories of voters, including persons with disabilities, from physical hearings. The directive stated that differently-abled electors who submit specific requests to the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) or Assistant EROs, either directly or through family members, may not be called for hearings. If notices had already been issued, officials were instructed to contact such voters by phone and conduct verification at their homes.

However, activists say the situation on the ground is starkly different, largely due to the short notice period. “Most voters are being asked to appear within two days or even the very next day. As people are already anxious and under great stress, they are not taking any chances and are rushing for hearings despite great hardships,” said Shampa Sengupta, a Kolkata-based disability rights activist.

A senior ECI official from West Bengal told The Hindu that it was the responsibility of Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to process and facilitate exemption requests, as they are local residents familiar with families in the area.

V. Muralidharan, general secretary of the National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD), said, “While the ECI has robustly implemented home voting for elderly and disabled voters during elections, the same groups face unnecessary harassment during voter roll revisions”.

“Many disabled persons have complained of being humiliated and treated in an undignified manner. With the exercise now increasingly resembling a citizenship verification drive, it is apprehended that many disabled people will not only face disenfranchisement, but also be forced to prove their citizenship,” he said.