While parliament debates electoral reforms, Trinamool Congress leader in Rajya Sabha Derek O'Brien on Wednesday said the exercise in itself is not a problem, but the way it is being implemented is.

In a blog published on Wednesday, O’Brien highlighted that border security falls under the Union home ministry amid allegations of illegal immigrants being included in the voter list.

"Let's be very clear. No one is against SIR (Special Intensive Revision) as a concept. No one is against having clean electoral rolls," O’Brien said. "It is the methodology and the haphazard implementation that is being questioned. We are looking for answers to many questions."

The TMC leader questioned whether the SIR is genuinely aimed at protecting the voter list. "Four states are going to elections in a few months. Assam, Bengal, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. Three out of these four states are going through the SIR process," he said. SIR is already underway in Assam.

O’Brien asked why the Centre had not conducted SIR in states like Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland, which share borders with Bangladesh or Myanmar.

He noted that protecting borders from infiltration is the responsibility of the Border Security Force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Central Reserve Police Force, and Sashastra Seema Bal, all under the Home Ministry.

"These institutions are all under the Home Minister. So who should be held accountable?" he asked.

He also highlighted concerns over the targeting of Bengali-speaking citizens. "There have been innumerable cases of Bengali-speaking citizens being targeted solely due to their mother tongue. Those who speak Bengali in a different dialect have been labelled infiltrators," O’Brien said.

The TMC leader pointed out that the same electoral rolls, now being vetted, were used for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

"How did these rolls become defective overnight? And if they are indeed defective, should the Lok Sabha, elected through these supposedly compromised rolls, not be dissolved immediately? Will the Union Government call for fresh elections?" he asked.

O’Brien questioned who would take responsibility for the "human cost" of the exercise, noting that several people engaged in SIR work have committed suicide in recent weeks allegedly due to the pressure of the exercise.

"At the height of the Rabi season, why were thousands of farmers forced to stand in day-long queues? Why were daily-wage workers losing their wages running pillar to post to authenticate their documents? Why were development programmes in many states brought to a standstill?" he said.

"Who will take responsibility for the lives of Block Level Officers (BLOs) lost because of the inhuman psychological and physical pressures while executing SIR?" he added, emphasizing that the Election Commission is a constitutional body and its functioning should be non-partisan. "But what is happening in Bengal leading up to the Assembly elections deserves scrutiny," he said.

O’Brien also highlighted a change in rules that now allows booth-level agents to be appointed from any registered elector of the same Assembly Constituency, whereas the previous rule required the agent to be a registered elector in the part of the electoral roll for which they were appointed.

He further raised concerns about the use of an AI app to identify duplicate voters. "There is an AI app being used to identify duplicate voters. There is no clarity about who built it, when the tenders were issued, or what data the app uses," he said.

"Looking for answers is not anti-national," O’Brien concluded.