West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote her fourth letter to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls Monday, accusing the Election Commission of India (ECI) of “disowning its own actions” of the last 23 years.
In the letter, she pointed out a lack of acknowledgement of documents submitted by voters during SIR hearings and errors in voter data. She also highlighted the issue of errors stemming from digitising the voter lists from 2002 using AI tools, resulting in genuine voters being labelled as having “logical discrepancies”.
“It has been noticed that during hearings conducted as part of the SIR electors are submitting requisite documents in support of their eligibility. However, in several cases, no proper acknowledgement or receipt is being issued for the documents submitted,” she wrote.
“Subsequently, at the stage of verification or hearing, these documents are reported as “not found” or “not available on record,” and on that basis, names of electors are being deleted from the electoral rolls. Such a procedure is fundamentally flawed and untenable. The non-issuance of documentary acknowledgement deprives electors of proof of submission and places them at the mercy of internal record-keeping deficiencies,” she added.
She said such administrative lapses lead to harassment of citizens and result in the denial of their constitutional right. “This defeats the very objective of the Special Intensive Revision, which is intended to strengthen and purify the electoral rolls, not to exclude genuine and eligible voters,” she wrote.
She said that in the absence of any digitised database of the last SIR, the manual voter lists of 200, including those published in vernacular scripts, were scanned and translated into English using AI tools for digitisation.
“During this transliteration, serious errors occurred in elector particulars such as name, age, sex, relationship and guardian’s name. These errors have resulted in large-scale data mismatches, leading to many genuine voters being categorised as ‘logical discrepancies’,” she said.
Banerjee wrote that over the past 23 years, many voters have submitted Form-8 along with valid government-issued documents. Following appropriate quasi judicial hearings conducted by electoral registration officers (EROs) and assistant electoral registration officers (AEROs), their details were accurately corrected and included in the current electoral roll for 2025, she said.
However, the Commission is now disregarding its own established procedures, which have been consistently followed for two decades, and is forcing voters to once again prove their identity and eligibility, she wrote.
The letter added, “Such an approach-disowning its own actions and mechanisms spanning more than two decades-is arbitrary, illogical and contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India. Why should the process revert to 2002? Does this imply that all revisions carried out over the intervening years were illegal?”
“Further, a large number of discrepancy cases involve minor variations, such as differences in the self / father’s name (e.g., “Kr” and “Kumar”; Shaik and Sk), or age etc are very common nature of errors, which should be resolved through a table-top exercise by BLO/ERO/AERO without calling electors for hearings. Surprisingly, the system allows disposal only through generation of hearing notices. Even cases already forwarded to the DEO by EROs/AEROs after due satisfaction of documents uploaded by BLOs are being repopulated at the ERO/AERO level, leaving no option except issuance of hearing notices,” she added.
Urging the CEC to resolve these issues, she wrote, “I trust that these issues will receive your immediate attention to not only end the harassment and agony of the citizens and the official machinery but also protect the democratic rights of citizens.”
In her third letter to CEC Gyanesh Kumar since the beginning of the SIR, Banerjee Saturday alleged that the ongoing drive had turned into an exercise to exclude voters rather than correct records, and has led to 77 deaths, four suicide attempts, and 17 hospitalisations.
“The hearing process has become largely mechanical, driven purely by technical data and completely devoid of the application of mind, sensitivity and human touch,” Banerjee wrote in the three-page letter.
Curated by Aisha Patel
