EC dissent row: How Bengal’s SIR concerns went unheeded

Months before the two Election Commissioners' objection to the poll panel’s handling of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) came to light, election officials in West Bengal had internally raised concerns, in vain, over software-generated logical discrepancies, changing instructions and restrictions on field officers’ ability to exercise their functions.

Citing a paper trail of such concerns, sources in the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office said the latest revelations showed that some of the concerns that surfaced during the Bengal SIR had broader parallels with the issues raised by the two Election Commissioners, particularly over the role of the IT system and the ability of field officers to exercise their functions.

They said that many of the same problems continued without being adequately addressed, suggesting that lessons from the Bengal experience had not been learnt.

Concerns documented in two memos

Loopholes in the process had been flagged as early as by the end of December, within weeks of the enumeration phase of the SIR starting in the state, sources said, citing official communications.

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The concerns were documented in Memo No. 5068-Home (Elec), dated December 27, 2025, in which the Additional Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal, acknowledged that the digital system was showing some electors as “unmapped” even though the authenticated hard copy of the 2002 electoral roll showed self or progeny linkage.

According to the memo, cited by the sources, the incorrect digital status could result in a consequential procedural step, with the system generating hearing notices for electors who were actually linked to the 2002 roll.

The CEO’s office consequently instructed Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) to verify such cases against the hard copy and deal with them manually rather than rely on the digital mapping.

Days later, another memo, numbered 5116-Home (Elec) and dated December 29, again dealt with the same issue of electors being marked “unmapped” in the BLO app despite being mapped in the hard copy of the 2002 electoral roll, suggesting that the digital mapping problem had not been fully resolved even after the earlier instructions.

What IE report said

According to an Indian Express report, Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions involving voter registration, deletion and restoration, access to electoral roll data and the filing of appeals against decisions taken during the SIR.

The subsequent course of the SIR suggests that these concerns did not disappear after they were flagged. In the current phase of the exercise, ERONET (Electoral Roll Officers’ Network) has again generated large numbers of “logical discrepancy” cases in Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi, raising questions over whether they were being generated mechanically.

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Ranjit Sur, vice president of the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR), also stated that concerns raised by Sandhu and Joshi were not new and had been flagged by election officials, civil society groups and political parties during the Bengal SIR.

“The concerns raised by the two commissioners were already visible during the Bengal SIR. Election officials had raised questions about the software, the discrepancies it was generating and the instructions being given to field officers. Civil society organisations and political parties had also raised these issues, but nothing changed,” Sur said, demanding that the entire SIR process be scrapped now.

According to Sur, the recurrence of similar problems in other states suggests that the Bengal experience did not lead to the systemic corrections that were needed.

AERO's resignation

There was visible frustration among election officials in Bengal over the persistence of problems despite being flagged repeatedly.

The software-related problem was specifically cited by Mousam Sarkar, an AERO in Howrah’s Bagnan constituency, when he resigned from his post on January 8, a development that was also reported by The Federal at the time.

In his resignation letter, Sarkar wrote that “logical discrepancies” had appeared because of sporadic errors in converting the 2002 electoral roll PDF into a CSV file.

Sarkar also pointed out that names, ages and sex recorded in the 2002 roll had subsequently been corrected through Form 8, but those changes were not always reflected in the data being used for the SIR.

He argued that treating the 2002 entries as definitive could therefore create false mismatches in father’s name, age and sex.

Sarkar’s case assumes greater relevance in light of the latest revelations, as Sandhu and Joshi too raised concerns about the electoral-roll technology and its impact on the exercise.

Even AEROs in Bengal directly raised the concern. In a letter dated January 6, the Assistant Programme Officers Welfare Association, West Bengal, an association of officials performing AERO duties, told the CEO that many electors who had earlier been shown as having linkage with the previous SIR were suddenly appearing on the CEO portal as “logical discrepancy” cases.

The officers said they were being instructed through WhatsApp messages, virtual meetings and verbal directions to treat such voters as “no mapping” cases and conduct fresh hearings.

The AEROs complained that there was no clear written order or comprehensive guideline governing such hearings, creating uncertainty over whether statutory officers were being adequately informed of decisions and whether the communications and IT systems were being operated in a manner that restricted the functions assigned to them.

Mamata demands arrest of CEC

Meanwhile, former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee demanded the arrest of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and called for a nationwide movement against those responsible for “manipulation” of the electoral process, saying the latest development has vindicated the concerns raised by her party months before the election.

Banerjee said the issue was no longer limited to Kumar’s removal and demanded criminal proceedings against him as well as action against other officials whom she alleged were involved in the process.

She also called for the INDIA bloc parties to meet soon to discuss a nationwide campaign.

“What we said earlier has been exposed today,” Banerjee said, arguing that the latest revelations had vindicated the TMC’s earlier allegations about the handling of the electoral process.