The EC’s task was less strenuous in Bihar, where it had to verify around 2 crore voters.
Election Commission of India faces massive voter verification in West Bengal; TMC opposes SIR and mobilises cadre, BJP alleges infiltration, creating logistical and political challenges. (Image: Ref)
Kolkata: With the rollout of SIR (Special Intensive Revision) in West Bengal just days away, the Election Commission of India is facing a herculean task of verifying 3.6 crore prospective voters in a span of just 90 days. Given the virulent antagonism by the Trinamool Congress against the implementation of SIR, it will not be an easy task for the poll panel. The EC’s task was less strenuous in Bihar, where it had to verify around 2 crore voters, officials told The Sunday Guardian. A matching exercise between the 2002 voters’ list when the last SIR was conducted and the current one has thrown up alarming statistics. Analysis of the electoral roll published after the 2002 SIR and the one in January 2025 has thrown up a 52% match. West Bengal has a voter base of 7.6 crore, EC officials said. Hence, the 48% extra names in the current voters list translates into 3.6 crores. A preparatory SIR mapping—matching of the 2002 and 2025 lists—has been completed for all districts except flood-ravaged Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling, which together account for 40 lakh voters. According to sources, the state-wide average matching percentage is between 50 and 55%. But the situation in North 24-Parganas district is concerning, with only 41% of voter records matching, the sources said. The sources said that since North 24-Parganas borders Bangladesh, this low percentage indicates that more than 50% of voters in this area are new. Experts consider a 50% new voter rate to be unusually high. Sources highlighted that an even more concerning scenario is of West Burdwan, where the matching percentage is below 40%.
The Election Commission’s massive verification drive, aimed at addressing anomalies in the electoral rolls, was spurred by concerns over the presence of dead voters, duplicate EPIC cards, fake voter entries, and mismatched identities. Former Chief Electoral Officers describe this as the most extensive audit of its kind in recent years, requiring booth-level verification, use of advanced deduplication software, and deployment of thousands of officials in urban and rural areas alike. The EC, keen not to repeat past lapses, has set an aggressive 90-day target to resolve these discrepancies ahead of crucial state elections in West Bengal and other regions.
At the heart of the controversy are claims raised by TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, who recently accused the EC of shielding irregularities for the benefit of the BJP. In a charged public address, Banerjee presented lists said to include fake voters—some with EPIC numbers matching residents from Haryana and Gujarat inserted into Bengal’s rolls. She has vowed to initiate a mass agitation if corrective action is not visible, hinting at a sit-in outside the EC’s headquarters.
The TMC has set up a high-level committee, involving several senior leaders, to monitor the verification process at the booth level. “The party is determined not to let even one fake vote slip through,” a spokesperson said, while calling on grassroots workers to offer real-time feedback of mismatches observed during roll checks.
The EC, for its part, has said that steps are being taken to “plug any loopholes,” including meetings with state government officials, IT experts, and district election officers. Its official statement pointedly dismisses opposition charges as “verifiably incorrect” and “aimed at pushing a biased narrative,” but acknowledges the logistical severity of the current assignment.
Verifying 3.6 crore entries will mean reviewing almost 3,89,000 records per day—an operation that requires coordination among thousands of field officers called Booth Level Officers, deep data mining, and cross-checks between multiple state and national databases. Officials said that the process involves identifying and flagging duplicate EPIC numbers detected across state boundaries, focusing particularly on areas flagged by political parties. The poll panel will also be deploying advanced data validation tools to screen for “ghost voters”, fake entries, and non-resident individuals.
The pressure on the EC is not just logistical—it is deeply political. The TMC has accused rival parties and EC officials of creating an environment of intimidation, suggesting that bureaucrats and voters are being cowed by the threat of reprisals and misinformation campaigns. Party leaders have recounted episodes of booth-level officials allegedly pressured to ignore discrepancies, with Mamata Banerjee urging her cadre to resist what she called “dirty tricks against democracy.”
The Trinamool Congress, which is currently organising “Bijaya Sammilani” gatherings at the block level, has already trained its guns at the poll panel and its foot-soldiers—the Block Level Officers. Ministers, MPs, MLAs and the party’s top brass who have fanned out across the state to interact with grassroots cadre, students and youngsters are using the Bijaya Sammilani platforms to warn against the implementation of SIR in West Bengal.
While Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee has been up in arms against SIR of electoral rolls in the state, her party leaders, including the MLAs and MPs, have ramped up their preparations for it. Holding the TMC workers’ meetings in their constituencies, the party legislators have been galvanising them into getting their act together for the impending SIR exercise.
At these meetings, several legislators have made a common pitch to the party’s rank and file: “Go with BLOs (Block Level Officers) when they go to the houses in your areas for the SIR… ensure that not a single voter’s name is deleted.” The possibility of mass protests where TMC’s cadre are mobilising aggressively, hangs over the coming weeks.
Another challenge before the poll panel is to have enough BLOs on the ground for verification. Already, it has been forced to issue show-cause notices against nearly 1,000 booth-level officers (BLOs) in West Bengal for alleged non-compliance with election-related directives under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, a senior official said. Leaders of state employees’ unions say that many government employees are reluctant to take up BLO duties given the “threat perception from the Trinamool party cadres.”
Meanwhile, the BJP has alleged that the Trinamool Congress is “infiltrating” the BLO list with party cadre.
