West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday alleged that the Election Commission of India (ECI) used AI tools devised by the BJP to delete names of voters from the draft electoral roll during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive in the poll-bound state.
She said that the voters whose names were deleted under the enumeration phase of the SIR were not given an opportunity to defend themselves.
Addressing a press conference at Bengal secretariat Nabanna, Banerjee said the deletions largely affected “genuine voters”, accusing the Electoral Registration Officer (EROs) of misusing their powers.
She said that the voters whose names were deleted from the draft electoral roll were not informed by the ECI about the reasons why their names were excluded.
She further claimed that ECI used AI software to look for mismatched names in the SIR data and allegedly deleted names of women who changed their surnames after marriage.
“The EC, while sitting in Delhi, used AI tools devised by the BJP to delete names. These AI software accounted for the names mismatch in SIR data. They deleted names of women who changed surnames post marriage,” she said.
Earlier on Monday, Banerjee wrote a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to “draw” his “attention” to “procedural lapses being observed during the ongoing SIR of electoral rolls, which are resulting in undue harassment of citizens, wrongful deletion of eligible-electors and their consequent disenfranchisement”.
In what was her fifth such letter to the ECI, the West Bengal Chief Minister said that the SIR process, as it is being implemented, is “fundamentally flawed, baseless and unconstitutional”.
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She expressed deep concern that eligible voters were being unlawfully excluded from the rolls due to procedural irregularities and what she described as “systemic negligence.”
The Election Commission is yet to respond to CM Banerjee’s allegations.