Kolkata, 12 January (H.S.) : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has once again written to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, alleging that errors caused by AI-based digitisation of the 2002 electoral rolls are creating serious problems for genuine voters during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.

In her fifth letter to the CEC since the start of the SIR process, Banerjee claimed that the use of artificial intelligence tools to digitise the 2002 voters’ list led to major mistakes in voter details. These errors, she said, resulted in large-scale data mismatches and the wrongful classification of many genuine voters as having “logical discrepancies”.

The Chief Minister accused the Election Commission of ignoring its own statutory procedures followed over the past two decades. She pointed out that several voters whose records had already been corrected after quasi-judicial hearings are now being forced to prove their identity all over again.

“Disowning its own actions and systems built over more than twenty years is arbitrary, illogical and against the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India,” Banerjee said in the letter.

She also raised concerns over the SIR documentation process, alleging that proper acknowledgements or receipts are not being issued for documents submitted by voters. This, she said, makes the entire procedure “fundamentally flawed”.

The Chief Minister further criticised the SIR hearing process, describing it as largely mechanical and driven purely by technical data. She alleged that it lacks sensitivity, application of mind and human judgement, warning that such an approach undermines the very foundation of democracy and the constitutional framework.

The Election Commission is yet to respond to the latest letter from the Chief Minister.

Hindusthan Samachar / Satya Prakash Singh