The Election Commission of India (ECI) has issued fresh instructions to West Bengal election officials. It said voters marked as “unmapped” in the BLO app should not be called for hearings. This is due to technical problems in digitising the 2002 electoral rolls during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) office in West Bengal explained the issue stems from incomplete conversion of PDF versions of the 2002 rolls into CSV format. This caused linkage failures in the booth-level officer (BLO) app for many electors. Despite the “unmapped” status in the system, many voters have valid linkage with the hard copy of the 2002 rolls, authenticated by district election officers (DEOs) and published on the CEO website. The directive says any hearing notices auto-generated should not be served. They must be kept with the electoral registration officer (ERO) or assistant ERO (AERO). Extracts of the 2002 rolls can be sent to DEOs for verification, following Election Commission guidelines. After checking, EROs or AEROs can decide next steps and upload necessary documents to close cases. Booth-level officers (BLOs) may also be assigned to do field verifications, including taking photos of concerned electors for system upload. An official stated, “This directive might be for the time being. If it is felt that hearings are at all required in some cases, that will be done only after a proper verification.” The directive also said if discrepancies are found later, during scrutiny or from complaints, electors can be called for hearings after notice. These instructions have been sent to all district election officers as part of the SIR exercise in West Bengal to improve electoral roll accuracy while managing legacy data issues.