Mamata questions EC over 'AI-driven' electoral roll errors: 'Why revert to 2002?'

The Bengal CM alleged that this process resulted in serious errors in elector details, including names, age, gender, relationships and guardians’ names, leading to large-scale data mismatches.

• Mamata Banerjee alleges AI errors in 2002 voter roll digitisation in West Bengal
• She claims genuine voters face hardship, data mismatches, and flawed procedures
• EC appoints 4 Special Roll Observers for smooth SIR completion

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, on Monday, wrote again to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, alleging that “AI-driven” errors in the digitisation of the 2002 electoral rolls have caused widespread hardship to genuine voters during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state.

In her fifth letter since the SIR exercise began, Banerjee claimed that the manual voter lists of 2002 were scanned and transliterated using artificial intelligence tools in the absence of a digitised database of the last SIR. She alleged that this process resulted in serious errors in elector details, including names, age, gender, relationships and guardians’ names, leading to large-scale data mismatches.

“These errors have resulted in many genuine voters being categorised as having ‘logical discrepancies’,” the chief minister wrote, adding that electors whose details had already been corrected over the past two decades were now being asked to re-establish their identity.

She accused the Election Commission of disregarding its own statutory processes followed consistently for over 20 years, noting that many electors had earlier submitted Form-8 along with valid documents and secured corrections after quasi-judicial hearings. “The Commission is now disowning its own actions and mechanisms spanning more than two decades. Such an approach is arbitrary, illogical and contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India,” she said.

Questioning the basis of the current exercise, Banerjee asked, “Why should the process revert to 2002? Does this imply that all revisions carried out over the intervening years were illegal?”

Flagging procedural lapses, the chief minister alleged that proper acknowledgements or receipts were not being issued for documents submitted during SIR hearings. She said that in several cases, documents submitted by electors were later reported as “not found” or “not available on record”, leading to deletion of names from the rolls. “The 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 wrote.

Banerjee also described the SIR hearing process as “largely mechanical, driven purely by technical data”, and said it was “completely devoid of the application of mind, sensitivity and human touch”. She argued that such an approach undermines “the bedrock of our democracy and constitutional framework”.

Highlighting what she described as the human cost of the exercise, the chief minister claimed that the SIR process had already seen “77 deaths, four attempts to suicide and 17 persons falling sick and requiring hospitalisation”, which she attributed to “fear, intimidation and disproportionate workload due to an unplanned exercise”.

She further criticised the treatment of women voters, stating that women who had moved to their matrimonial homes and changed their surnames after marriage were being summoned for hearings to prove their identity. “This reflects a complete lack of social sensitivity and constitutes a grave insult to women and genuine voters. Is this how a constitutional authority treats half of the electorate?” she asked.

Banerjee also condemned what she termed the harassment of eminent citizens, noting that Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, poet Joy Goswami, actor and MP Deepak Adhikari, cricketer Mohammed Shami, and the Maharaj of Bharat Sevashram Sangha had received SIR notices. “Does this not amount to sheer audacity on the part of the Election Commission?” she wrote.

Earlier, the chief minister had alleged that the SIR exercise had been turned into a process aimed at exclusion rather than correction of electoral rolls and accused the poll body of political bias and high-handedness.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has appointed four additional Special Roll Observers for West Bengal to ensure the smooth completion of the SIR exercise.