New Delhi, June 26: The Election Commission's door-to-door campaign is underway in West Bengal to clean-up the state's electoral roll of 'ASD voters' - an acronym referring to voters who are either 'absent, shifted or deceased'.

The initiative came months after a BJP delegation headed by former Trinamool strongman Mukul Roy approached the poll panel in Delhi, alleging the presence of "lakhs of ghost voters" in Bengal being allegedly used by the TMC to win the elections. (Meanwhile, check the district-wise electoral list in Bengal here)

The voters' list revision drive was initiated by the Commission on June 11, and is scheduled to continue till June 30. Door-to-door verification process is being undertaken by the EC officials to weed-out the ACD voters from the 70,000-odd polling booths in the state.

After the clean-up drive ends on June 30, the EC officials will prepare the pre-revision draft of the state's electoral roll. Between September-November, the summary revision draft would be prepared, followed by the publication of final electoral roll on January 4 next year.

Pollsters have linked the ongoing 'clean-up' process to the alleged wide-scale malpractices reported in the recently conducted panchayat elections. The ruling TMC won 33 per cent, or over 18,000 rural seats, without a contest.

In the past week, Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had indicated that the anti-BJP parties should begin preparing for the general elections, which she claimed will be called "in next 5-6 months".

Polling officials, however, have denied linking the voters' verification process to the possibility of early conduct of Lok Sabha elections.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 26, 2018 07:13 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).