West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee has escalated her confrontation with the Election Commission of India (ECI) by dispatching her fifth consecutive letter to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar. The latest communication, dated Monday, raises a new alarm over alleged Artificial Intelligence-driven digitisation errors plaguing the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state.
AI Glitches Cause Widespread Hardship to Voters
In her detailed letter, Banerjee expressed profound concern that the use of AI tools in digitising the legacy 2002 electoral rolls has resulted in serious inaccuracies. She claimed these technical glitches are causing widespread hardship to genuine voters who are now being forced to prove their identity anew.
The CM alleged that the process has led to large-scale data mismatches and the wrongful categorisation of legitimate electors under 'logical discrepancies'. This, she argued, is forcing a vast number of citizens to undergo fresh verification despite having their details corrected previously through established quasi-judicial hearings conducted by the EC itself.
EC Accused of Disregarding Its Own Statutory Processes
Mamata Banerjee launched a sharp critique against the poll panel, accusing it of arbitrarily abandoning its own statutory processes that have been meticulously followed for over two decades. She stated that the current SIR hearing process has become "largely mechanical", driven solely by technical data without the necessary application of mind, sensitivity, or human touch.
"Such an approach, disowning its own actions and mechanisms spanning more than two decades, is arbitrary, illogical and contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India," the Chief Minister wrote in her letter. She further highlighted a procedural flaw, alleging that no proper acknowledgements are being issued for documents submitted by voters during the SIR exercise, branding the entire procedure as 'fundamentally flawed'.
Political Row and Scale of the Revision
The SIR exercise in West Bengal has been a major flashpoint since its initiation last year. The ruling TMC has consistently accused the Election Commission of acting at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and weaponising the electoral roll revision ahead of the crucial assembly elections scheduled for later this year.
The scale of the exercise is massive. The EC has called 25 lakh (2.5 million) voters for hearings which commenced across the state in December. Currently, the poll panel is conducting hearings for 32 lakh (3.2 million) unmapped voters who could not be linked to the 2002 rolls through self or progeny mapping. The next phase, involving hearings for voters flagged with logical discrepancies, is set to begin on January 14, Wednesday.
Banerjee concluded her letter with a grave warning, stating that such a technically rigid and error-prone process undermines "the bedrock of our democracy and constitutional framework". The ball is now in the Election Commission's court to respond to these serious allegations as West Bengal's political temperature continues to rise in the run-up to the elections.
