West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has again written to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. In her latest letter sent on Monday, she alleged that errors created during AI based digitisation of the 2002 electoral rolls were now causing serious difficulties for genuine voters during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision exercise in the state.
This was Banerjee’s fifth letter to the Election Commission since the SIR process began. She said that while converting old voter records into digital form, the use of artificial intelligence had led to major mistakes in voters’ personal details. These mistakes, she claimed, resulted in widespread data mismatches. As a result, many genuine electors were being wrongly marked as having “logical discrepancies” in their records.
The chief minister accused the Election Commission of ignoring the statutory procedures that had been followed for more than two decades. She said voters were now being forced to prove their identity again even though their details had already been corrected earlier through quasi judicial hearings. According to her, such a move amounted to rejecting the Commission’s own past decisions.
Calling the approach arbitrary and illogical, Banerjee said it went against both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution of India. She also complained that no proper acknowledgements were being issued when voters submitted documents during the SIR process. In her view, this made the entire exercise fundamentally flawed.
She further criticised the way hearings were being conducted. She said the SIR process had become mostly mechanical and was being driven only by technical data. According to her, it lacked application of mind, sensitivity and human judgment. She warned that such a system undermined the very foundation of democracy and the constitutional framework of the country.
Banerjee also highlighted what she described as the human cost of the exercise. She wrote that a process which should have been helpful had already resulted in 77 deaths. She added that there had been four suicide attempts and that 17 people had fallen ill and required hospital treatment. She attributed this to fear, intimidation and excessive pressure created by an unplanned exercise carried out by the Election Commission of India.
The chief minister also objected to what she called the harassment of prominent citizens. She listed Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, poet Joy Goswami, actor and MP Deepak Adhikari, international cricketer Mohammed Shami and the Maharaj of Bharat Sevashram Sangha. She said all of them had been subjected to an insensitive and inhuman process. She questioned whether this showed sheer audacity on the part of the Election Commission.
Banerjee raised special concern about the treatment of women voters. She said many women who had moved to their matrimonial homes and changed their surnames after marriage were being summoned to hearings to prove their identity. According to her, this reflected a lack of social awareness and amounted to a serious insult to women and to genuine voters.
She asked whether a constitutional authority should treat half of the electorate in this manner. In her letter, Banerjee urged the Election Commission to immediately correct these problems. She said urgent steps were needed to end the harassment and distress faced by citizens and by officials working on the ground. She also called on the Commission to protect the democratic rights of voters and ensure that the SIR exercise did not turn into a source of suffering for ordinary people.
