Govt to use SIR list to prune welfare database

Kolkata: The newly elected Bengal govt will use the voters' list created out of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls ahead of the assembly polls to prune names of deceased or relocated individuals whose names continue to feature as beneficiaries of state govt schemes.Directions to the effect have been issued to DMs who have been asked to provide details of people who could not be reached by BLOs in the course of the SIR process.DMs are required to submit assembly constituency-wise lists including names of municipalities and blocks where voters were untraceable.An official explained that when BLOs were making door-to-door visits, they identified absentee voters and those names will be deleted to ensure they do not appear in beneficiary databases.Authorities have also been asked to verify beneficiary documents to ensure non-citizens are removed from the database of schemes such as Lakshmir Bhandar and probe whether funds had been released earlier in the names of non-existent beneficiaries.Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari had said on Monday that while the govt would continue all existing welfare schemes, strict scrutiny will be enforced to remove deleted voters from beneficiary lists.