‘Docus submitted but marked not found’: CM flags ‘arbitrary’ move in letter to CEC
Times of India | 13 January 2026
Kolkata: In her second letter to chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar within 48 hours, CM Mamata Banerjee on Monday alleged that the Election Commission was not issuing proper acknowledgement or receipts for documents submitted during Special Intensive Revision hearings and marking them "not found" to disenfranchise genuine voters.
After the 2002 SIR, voters applied for changes in their names and addresses, which were ratified by the EC and included in the 2025 poll rolls, Banerjee said. "The commission is now disregarding its own statutory processes followed consistently over 2 decades and compelling electors to once again establish their identity and eligibility," she wrote.
This was "arbitrary, illogical and contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution", the CM wrote in her Monday letter, which was also her sixth letter to the CEC since the Nov 4 SIR rollout in Bengal.
Banerjee wrote: "During hearings, electors are submitting requisite documents in support of their eligibility. However, in several cases, no proper acknowledgement or receipt is being issued. Subsequently, at the stage of verification or hearing, these documents are reported as ‘not found' or ‘not available on record', and on that basis, names of electors are being deleted from the rolls."
The CM argued that the "non-issuance of documentary acknowledgement deprives electors of proof of submission and places them at the mercy of internal record-keeping deficiencies". "This defeats the very objective of SIR, which is intended to strengthen and purify the electoral rolls, not exclude genuine and eligible voters."
Banerjee said over the last 23 years, a large number of electors have submitted Form 8 along with valid govt-issued documents, and after due quasi-judicial hearings by EROs/AEROs, their particulars were duly corrected and incorporated in the current rolls. "Why should the process revert to 2002? Does this imply that all revisions carried out during the intervening years were illegal?" she asked.
The CM also alleged over-reliance on English language-based AI tools. "In the absence of any digitised database of the last SIR, the manual voter lists' of 2002 — including those published in vernacular scripts — were scanned and translated into English using AI tools. During this, serious errors occurred in elector particulars such as name, age, sex, relationship and guardian's names. These resulted in large-scale data mismatches, leading to many genuine voters being categorised as ‘logical discrepancies'," she said.
The CM alleged: "A large number of discrepancy cases involve minor variations such as differences in self/father's name (eg, ‘Kr' and ‘Kumar'; Shaik and Sk), or age, etc, which should be resolved through a table-top exercise by BLO/ERO/AERO without calling electors for hearings. Even cases forwarded to the DEO by EROs/AEROs after due satisfaction of documents uploaded by BLOs are being repopulated at the ERO/AERO level, leaving no option except issuance of hearing notices."
Banerjee mentioned that the EC was flouting its own norms "contained in its letter dated Oct 27, 2025". "It stated at Para 2(e), ‘ERO to issue notice, only after publication of draft Electoral Rolls, to those electors, who could not be linked with previous SIR Electoral Rolls, to ascertain their eligibility,'" she said. All these voters who are being issued hearing notices are already mapped with the 2002 electoral roll, by themselves or through progeny, Banerjee claimed.
Arguing that SIR was being reduced to a "mechanical process driven by technicalities" and not "a reasoned application of mind", Banerjee alleged that "such administrative lapses are being unfairly forced upon citizens, resulting in denial of their constitutional rights".