Wednesday, March 1 2006 11:59 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kolkata: Twenty Election Commission observers today began a seven-day tour of all 19 districts of poll-bound West Bengal, the third since January, to supervise updating of electoral rolls in the state.

The two earlier visits in mid-January and end of January by the EC observers led to the detection of a huge number of false, dead and shifted voters.

On February 22, when the final voters' lists were published, West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Debashis Sen had announced that 12.98 lakh names had been deleted from the electoral rolls, which was four times the number of deletions as compared to that in 2004 when it was 3.47 lakh and 3.39 lakh in 2005, with the final publication of the voters lists that day.

The final electoral roll was released after special summary revision of the draft roll.

There were 4.81 crore electors in the last Lok Sabha elections in the state in 2004.

The updating of the roll would continue till the filing of nomination papers.