Kolkata: A day after Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took to social media with a stark warning and urged that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) must be halted as 28 lives were lost due to the anxiety and excessive workload associated with it, she intensified her demand on Thursday by writing to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.
In her letter, Banerjee alleged that the ongoing SIR of electoral rolls is being forced upon government officials and voters in an “unplanned and coercive manner”, creating an atmosphere of fear and distress.
Urging the CEC to intervene without delay, she demanded an immediate halt to the process and a “thorough reassessment of the present methodology and timelines”.
Banerjee wrote that she had repeatedly raised concerns about the SIR but was now “compelled” to intervene as the situation had reached a “deeply alarming” stage.
She alleged that the exercise was “unplanned, chaotic
and dangerous”, with inadequate preparedness, unclear communication, gaps in training and a lack of clarity on mandatory documentation. The process, she said, has
been “structurally unsound” from the start as BLOs are unable to meet voters amid their livelihood schedules.
The Chief Minister said many booth-level officers (BLOs), under “extreme pressure” and fear of punitive action, were being pushed to submit incorrect or incomplete entries, risking disenfranchisement of genuine voters and compromising the integrity of the electoral roll.
She criticised the response of the Election Commission, alleging that instead of offering support or extending timelines, the CEO’s office in West Bengal had resorted to intimidation. Show-cause notices were being issued “without justification”, she wrote, and overstretched BLOs were being threatened with disciplinary action.
Appreciating the efforts of BLOs, Banerjee wrote that unrealistic workloads, tight timelines and inadequate support for online data entry had placed the process — and its credibility — at “severe risk”. Many BLOs, including teachers and frontline workers, were struggling with door-to-door surveys and e-submissions amid server failures and data mismatches. At the current pace, she said, it was “almost certain” that accurate uploading of voter data across constituencies would not be completed by December 4.
Referring to the suicide of an anganwadi worker serving as a BLO in Mal, Jalpaiguri, she wrote that the “human cost” of the mismanaged exercise had become “unbearable”. She claimed several workers across the state were under extreme mental stress, and in some cases, lives had been lost. A revision that earlier took three years was now being compressed into three months, she added.
Banerjee also argued that the timing of the revision was unrealistic, coinciding with the harvest season when farmers, agricultural labourers and administrative staff, including teachers, are heavily occupied. The hurried process, she cautioned, increases the risk of errors in voter data, threatening the accuracy of electoral rolls and the integrity of the democratic system.
She warned that unless the process is corrected immediately, the consequences would be “irreversible”, and urged the CEC to take “responsibility, humanity and decisive, corrective action” without delay.