SIR mechanical and flawed, causing harassment, Mamata writes to CEC again

Kolkata: Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has written to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for the fifth time, alleging serious procedural lapses in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which are leading to voter harassment and the wrongful deletion of genuine electors.

In her January 12 letter, Banerjee said the SIR process is compelling citizens to re-establish their identity despite their particulars having been corrected over the past two decades through statutory procedures.

She pointed out that electoral rolls from 2002 were scanned and translated into English during digitisation, leading to errors in names, age, gender, relationship and guardian details, causing large-scale data mismatches and voters being marked with “logical discrepancies”.

The Chief Minister said that over the last 23 years, electors had submitted Form-8 applications with valid documents and, after quasi-judicial hearings by EROs and AEROs, their details were incorporated into the Electoral Roll-2025. Ignoring these corrections and forcing fresh hearings, she said, was arbitrary and contrary to the Constitution.

Banerjee flagged the non-issuance of acknowledgements for documents submitted during SIR hearings, alleging that in several cases the documents were later shown as “not found” or “not available on record”, leading to the deletion of names. She described the process as mechanical, fundamentally flawed and driven by technicalities rather than reasoned application of mind, causing hardship to voters and resentment among field officials. She also questioned the practice of issuing hearing notices even for minor discrepancies such as spelling or age variations, which she said could be resolved at the official level. The letter further questioned the rollback to the 2002 rolls and alleged deviation from the Election Commission’s own October 27, 2025, directive on issuing hearing notices. Urging immediate intervention, Banerjee said the objective of the SIR exercise should be to strengthen electoral rolls, not to exclude eligible voters, and called on the Commission to protect citizens’ democratic rights.