A booth-level officer (BLO), recently honoured for completing the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls ahead of schedule, has now served himself a notice to appear for a verification hearing over alleged anomalies.

Sajjad Hossain, the BLO for booth 208 of Banshihari block in South Dinajpur, has received a notice summoning him to a hearing on January 28 at the Banshihari High School.

According to procedure, as he is both a voter and BLO, he was required to formally serve the notice to himself.

The Trinamool Congress has seized upon the incident to target the BJP and the Election Commission, questioning how a BLO awarded for efficient and timely work could be summoned over “discrepancies” in his enumeration form.

A resident of Block Office Para in Ward 4 of Buniadpur Municipality, Hossain is the headmaster of the Samsapur Primary School in Banshihari block.

On his summons, Hossain said: “The reason given is that my father’s name is registered as the guardian of six voters. But we are six siblings, clearly mentioned in the survey form. Second, my father’s name has been misspelt. These mistakes are happening because of AI use.”

In one of her letters to chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had alleged that serious errors occurred during the digitisation of the 2002 voter list using AI tools, leading to wrongful categorisation of genuine voters as having “logical discrepancies”.

Hossain said that about a month ago, he was awarded by the administration for completing the SIR survey and uploading names before time.

Subhash Chaki, a Trinamool Congress leader of the South Dinajpur district unit, said it was shocking that a government employee officially recognised for his work was now being called for a hearing. “The reasons cited for summoning him is shameful. The Election Commission is harassing people at the behest of the BJP,” Chaki said.

Swarup Chowdhury, the district BJP president, said: “The allegations hold no water. This is simply administrative work carried out by the Election Commission.”