Acting on directives from the Election Commission of India, the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer has launched a statewide drive aimed at bringing every eligible voter onto the electoral rolls. The CEO's office announced that all 24 District Election Officers across West Bengal had begun an outreach effort to ensure no eligible voter is absent from the electoral rolls.

The announcement came while gatherings in the national capital, organised by opposition parties within the INDIA bloc, Citizens for Justice and Peace activists, and left-leaning student groups, were calling for the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Participants at those events described irregularities in the voter rolls and raised objections to the Commission's Special Intensive Revision exercise.

Booths established across Bengal by the Chief Electoral Officer aim to bring every qualified voter onto the rolls. A press release from the office noted that grievances can be directed to the relevant BLO, AERO, ERO, or DEO, and that the office is committed to ensuring no qualifying voter is left off the list.

Against that backdrop, CPI-M, Congress, and the Trinamool Congress — the party headed by Mamata Banerjee — have been pressing for the prompt reinstatement of around 38 lakh voters whose cases remain before tribunals convened on the direction of the Supreme Court.

During a 6 October meeting with chief electoral officers drawn from states and Union Territories, the national poll body directed that the special drive be treated as a priority, rolling out first through camps and then through door-to-door visits carried out by booth-level officers. The alert went out on 2 October.

The Bengal CEO put a query to the poll panel regarding whether voters — numbering more than 38 lakh — with cases pending before appellate tribunals would be covered under the drive. A written request from the Bengal chief electoral officer to the Election Commission of India seeks guidance on whether people whose enrolment applications remain pending before the state's appellate tribunals may be brought into the ongoing drive to add electors who were left out of the Special Intensive Revision process.

Voter rolls compiled before the Summary Intensive Revision exercise were to be set against the updated registers by chief electoral officers across the 20 states and Union Territories where that exercise had already concluded. Anyone found eligible but absent from the newer lists was to be brought onto the rolls via Form 6 within a month, in an exercise formally set in motion by the Election Commission of India.

Participants at a city-based public gathering called for the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Speakers at the event also raised objections to the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, which several of them attributed to his oversight.