West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday accused the Election Commission (EC) of deleting 54 lakh names from draft electoral rolls during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR), without giving voters a chance to respond or defend themselves.
Key Allegations:
- Deletions largely affected genuine electors, including many women whose surnames changed after marriage.
- Banerjee claimed the EC used AI tools devised by the BJP to identify mismatches and remove names.
- Errors arising from AI-driven digitisation caused data mismatches, disproportionately impacting women and others whose details had legitimately changed.
- She highlighted the introduction of the term “logical discrepancy”, which was not part of the original SIR process, allegedly used to justify further deletions.
- Banerjee alleged a “BJP-EC nexus” was planning to remove another one crore names from the final electoral rolls.
- Booth Level Agents (BLA-2s) were allegedly not allowed to attend hearings, limiting political oversight in the verification process.
Procedural Concerns Raised:
- No proper acknowledgment was being issued for documents submitted during SIR.
- AI errors stemmed from digitisation of the 2002 voters’ list, causing wrongful categorisation of genuine voters.
- Banerjee described the entire SIR procedure as fundamentally flawed.
The Chief Minister has written to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar five times over the matter, but the EC has not issued a public response yet.