ECI appoints four additional Special Roll Observers for SIR in West Bengal

Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], January 11 (ANI): The Election Commission of India has appointed four additional Special Roll Observers (SROs) for West Bengal to ensure the smooth completion of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
The move aims to strengthen public confidence and smooth operations during the SIR process.
Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar welcomed the ECI's decisions and said, "The Election Commission is trying to make a flawless voter list/electoral roll. For that, I think if they need many more officers, they should also do so."
Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress-led West Bengal government has repeatedly alleged large-scale irregularities in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Earlier, they linked the resignation of an Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) in West Bengal as evidence of what it called an "institutional failure" within the Election Commission's own process.
In a post on X, the TMC wrote, "When @ECISVEEP's own officers resign, the SIR scam stands exposed! And this is no longer a political charge. This is now an indictment from within the Election Commission itself. An AERO has resigned, stating in black and white that he can no longer participate in the ongoing SIR because the process is logically flawed, administratively dishonest, and morally indefensible."
The TMC referred to the resignation letter of an AERO from the Bagnan Assembly Constituency in Uluberia, Howrah district, dated January 8, 2026.
In a letter to the Electoral Registration Officer, the officer stated that he could no longer continue in his role following the identification of "Logical Discrepancies" in the AERO login system.
Detailing the reasons, the officer wrote in a letter that "the Logical discrepancies appeared in the BLO apps due to sporadic errors in the conversion of the PDF of the 2002 Electoral Roll (last SIR in West Bengal) data to CSV, as admitted by the Additional Chief Electoral Officer."
The resignation letter further said that the spelling of names recorded in the 2002 electoral rolls was being treated as "sacrosanct," even though "many names were corrected through Form 8 afterwards in accordance with the rules of ECI." According to the officer, this led to widespread father-name mismatches during "Progeny Mapping."
He also pointed out that "in many cases the age and sex of the names of 2002 were flawed," which had later been corrected through due process, but were not being recognised under the current SIR. In addition, the officer flagged serious data anomalies, stating, "In many cases, names of the voters appeared as 'Ya'. In India, we can hardly find anybody bearing these kinds of names."
Over 58.2 lakh names were deleted during the enumeration period of the SIR exercise in the state. The ECI had published the draft voter list for West Bengal on December 16. The claims and objections period will continue till January 15, 2026, and the final electoral roll will be published on February 14, 2026. (ANI)