SIR in Bengal: Mamata Banerjee fires 5th letter to CEC Gyanesh Kumar, flags ‘AI-driven' digitisation errors this time

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has once again written to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, raising questions about the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in poll-bound West Bengal.

This time, the TMC chief has claimed that the Artificial Intelligence-driven digitisation errors in the 2002 electoral rolls were causing widespread hardship to genuine voters during the Election Commission's SIR exercise.

In what is her fifth letter to the chief election commissioner since the beginning of the SIR of electoral rolls, Banerjee said serious errors occurred in elector particulars during the digitisation of the 2002 voters' list using AI tools, leading to large-scale data mismatches and wrongful categorisation of genuine voters as having ‘logical discrepancies’.

EC disregarding its own statutory processes

The West Bengal CM also accused the poll panel of disregarding its own statutory processes that have been followed over the last two decades. She said electors were being compelled to re-establish identity despite earlier corrections made after "quasi-judicial hearings".

"Such an approach, disowning its own actions and mechanisms spanning more than two decades, is arbitrary, illogical and contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India," she alleged. West Bengal will go to assembly polls later this year.

The ongoing SIR exercise in West Bengal sparked a row since its inception last year, with the ruling Trinamool accusing the Election Commission of India of working at the behest of the BJP and weaponising the electoral rolls.

In Monday’s letter, Mamata Banerjee also alleged that no proper acknowledgement was being issued for documents submitted during SIR, claiming that the procedure was ‘fundamentally flawed.’

Mamata Banerjee also said the SIR hearing process had become "largely mechanical, driven purely by technical data", and was "completely devoid of the application of mind, sensitivity and human touch", claiming that it undermined "the bedrock of our democracy and constitutional framework".

As many as 25 lakh voters have been called for the hearings which started across the state in December. The poll panel is currently engaged in conducting hearings of 32 lakh unmapped voters who could not link with the 2002 electoral rolls through self or progeny mapping. The hearing of voters with logical discrepancies is scheduled to start on 14 January, Wednesday.

(With agency inputs)