The Trinamool Congress expressed doubts whether the Election Commission would be able to meet the deadline of completing the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in an error-free manner, which otherwise would defeat the purpose of the exercise.
“At this pace, it is almost certain that by 4 December, voter data across several constituencies cannot be uploaded with accuracy, paving the way for mass errors and the potential disenfranchisement of genuine voters. This situation strikes at the core of electoral integrity,” said state minister Chandrima Bhattacharya.
Bhattacharya, state minister Aroop Biswas and Lok Sabha MP from Barrackpore Partha Bhowmik met the CEO Saturday hours after a Booth Level Officer was found hanging at her residence in Nadia’s Krishnagar Saturday.
The ongoing enumeration process will be completed by 4 December and the draft electoral rolls will be published on December 9. For claims and objections to the draft rolls, the central poll panel has set a month-long deadline from December 9 to January 8. Hearings and verification of the same will be heard between December 9-31.
The final voters list will be made public on February 7 2026.
Bhattacharya said the mistakes made by the central poll panel would prove costly for the electorate in Bengal.
The Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had Thursday urged the chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to halt the SIR exercise.
“When the implementing authority repeatedly ignores systematic failures, it is the voter who ultimately pays the price. The constitutional responsibility to safeguard the sanctity of the electoral roll must not be compromised under any circumstances,” Bhattacharya said.
“We strongly urge (the EC) to take decisive corrective steps without delay. If this chaotic and coercive drive continues in its present form, the consequences for officials, for voters and for the democratic framework itself will be severe and irreversible.”
The Trinamool Congress has claimed four out of five voters in South 24-Parganas district alone may have to appear before the poll officials to ensure they can retain their voting rights if the SIR process continues in its present form.
“State-wide there is widespread failure of BLO app mapping. In South 24-Parganas, even after correctly entering the Assembly constituency, part number, 80 per cent of the voters cannot be matched with the 2002 SIR rolls. The recurring mapping errors have rendered the process dysfunctional and unreliable,” said Bhattacharya.
“This technical collapse means four out of every five electors may be forced to appear in the hearings before quasi-judicial authorities merely to retain their constitutional right as voters. This is logistically impossible, legally untenable and morally unacceptable in any functioning democracy,” the minister said.
The Trinamool leaders said the faulty app provided to the BLOs ram the risk of mass disenfranchisement.
Since the SIR exercise was rolled out at the end of October and the ground work began from November 4, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) in Bengal, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Kerala have died, some of them by suicide who blamed the “heavy workload”.
The Trinamool has argued before the EC that the BLOs are unprepared and the SIR process in its current form is “structurally unworkable.”
“The overwhelming feedback from the ground confirms that BLOs have not been provided even the most basic level of training to execute this highly technical and sensitive exercise despite their tireless commitment,” Bhattacharya said.
According to the Trinamool the BLOs are overburdened and underprepared to meet the stringent requirements of completing the monumental exercise of revising the rolls of a 7crore-plus electorate.
“There is an absence of structured training modules on data entry, documentation norms and error handling. No clarity on required documents, leading to repeated mismatches and duplicate submissions,” the minister said.
She said the BLOs are facing difficulty in making the door-to-door visits as simultaneously they have to carry on with their livelihood, especially the school teachers and ASHA workers.
“The BLOs have been forced into impossible schedules because of unrealistic timelines and unmanageable workloads. They have not been trained to resolve hardware failures, app crashes and repeated verification errors,” she said.
The minister said it was wrong to expect the BLOs could perform both the responsibilities simultaneously and that made the purpose of the SIR exercise redundant.
The Trinamool’s demand from the EC is to stop any punitive action until training, standard operating procedures and support system is provided to the BLOs, like written operational guidelines and clear instructions on documentation norms. The party also wants help desks, technical support lines and troubleshooting units at the district-level.
“The EC should reassess the timelines for the revision process in light of the ground realities,” she said.
State minister Aroop Biswas said the EC was clearly working under the instructions of the BJP.
“They have decided two crore voters have to be deleted. The 2002 electoral roll on the website is full of errors. In each booth 150-200 voters’ names have been deleted. The photographs, names, and relationships everything is wrong,” said Biswas.