'Software doesn't understand...': EC officials admit to software glitches during SIR in West Bengal, report says

Mamata Banerjee

• ERO Net software issues flagged many voters for "logical discrepancies"
• Translation errors and spelling variations caused genuine voters to be flagged
• EC urged better coordination with West Bengal to resolve SIR issues.

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Some of the issues flagged by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in the Supreme Court regarding the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls have roots in the Electoral Registration Officer Network used by the Election Commission of India, senior officials from the poll body’s IT division said, according to a report by Hindustan Times.

The officials, who requested anonymity as per the HT report, said the problem was two-fold. It involved the physical clarity of old voter records and the translation of electoral rolls from 2002 and 2004 from Bengali to English.

“The system depends heavily on how clear the old records are. If the scanned copies are unclear or faded, the chances of mistakes increase,” one of the officials said.

Other officials explained that the software first reads old paper voter lists written in Bengali and converts them into English text before matching names and family details with current voter records. “If the old and new spellings do not match closely enough, the system automatically flags that particular voter for further checking,” a second official said. This process is internally referred to by the Election Commission as a “logical discrepancy”.

As a result, common spelling variations were flagged, officials said, citing examples such as Mohammed being recorded as Muhammad, Sheikh being read as Shekh by the software, and Mondal appearing as Mandal.

“The software does not understand local language habits or name variations. It simply compares spellings and marks differences,” the official said.

On Wednesday, Banerjee told the Supreme Court that the SIR process was generating a large number of “logical discrepancies” due to software-related issues, resulting in genuine voters being flagged. The court asked the Election Commission to clarify the basis for such flags and ensure that eligible voters were not excluded.

On Thursday, the Election Commission wrote to the West Bengal government, citing non-cooperation in the SIR exercise and seeking an explanation on compliance with its directions. The poll body stressed the need for coordination to complete the revision process.

The officials acknowledged that heavy reliance on the software had reduced the role of Booth Level Officers and Electoral Registration Officers, who typically correct spelling or language-related errors during field verification. “Earlier, these small errors could be fixed immediately on the ground. Now, once the system flags a voter, the correction process becomes longer,” the official said.

Cyber security expert Srinivas Kodali said such outcomes were expected. “When a system only compares text and does not understand language or context, it ends up treating small differences as serious issues,” he said.

ERO Net, developed by the National Informatics Centre and implemented nationwide in 2013-14, was designed to bring voter registration, correction and deletion onto a single digital platform. Officials said that while the core system has been in place for over a decade, new checks linked to the SIR were introduced only last year, leading to a sharp increase in entries being marked with “logical discrepancies”.

The officials added that the problem was compounded because software changes were made while the SIR exercise was already in progress, without halting field work or issuing clear written instructions. “The software kept getting updated, but the work on the ground could not stop,” the official said.