West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has written to the Chief Election Commissioner criticizing the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, alleging it has led to 77 deaths and aims to exclude voters. She highlighted the lack of sensitivity in the hearing process and urged corrective actions.
On Saturday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote her third letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, alleging that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has become a tool to exclude voters rather than correct records. The letter claims the process has resulted in 77 deaths, four suicide attempts, and 17 hospitalizations. Banerjee wrote, “The hearing process has become largely mechanical, driven purely by technical data and completely devoid of the application of mind, sensitivity and human touch.”
She accused the exercise of aiming at “neither of correction nor of inclusion… but solely of deletion and of exclusion,” undermining the democratic and constitutional framework. At the end of the typed letter, Banerjee added a handwritten note: “Though I know you won’t reply or clarify. But (it is) my duty to inform you (of) the details.”
Banerjee criticized the summoning of eminent figures such as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, poet Joy Goswami, actor and MP Deepak Adhikari, cricketer Mohammed Shami, and a seer from Bharat Sevashram Sangha, calling it “sheer audacity on the part of the ECI.” She highlighted harassment of women electors who changed surnames after marriage, forcing them to prove identity in hearings, which she described as a “grave insult to women and genuine voters.”
The chief minister alleged that untrained observers and micro-observers were overstepping their mandate, verbally abusing citizens and labeling them “Desh Drohi.” She noted that state police, already stretched for the Gangasagar Mela, could not provide security to these observers. On technical issues, Banerjee pointed out that West Bengal uses a different portal from other states, with erratic backend alterations causing confusion and amounting to a “deliberate and clandestine attempt to disenfranchise eligible voters.”
Urging the Election Commission to act, she wrote, “Though it is already very late, hope good sense prevails, and appropriate corrective actions are taken from your end to minimise the harassment, inconvenience and agony of the common citizen of the state.”