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The claims that the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) allegedly sends instructions through informal messages on WhatsApp to state officials, changing the rules by which the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll was being conducted in the state, are true, according to the Reporters’ Collective, which independently confirmed this in an investigative report.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) had initially alleged this in a plea filed by the party’s parliamentary leader Derek O’Brien before the Supreme Court. He had said the Election Commission of India (ECI) was sending out instructions on the SIR to booth-level officers (BLOs) to act without “formal orders.” The top court is currently seeking ECI’s reply in the case.
In some online meetings, the state officials were seeking formal directions from the CEO on how to conduct or modify the voter revision process. Among the two messages that the officials claimed were in direct violation of the already published rules of SIR was to advance the deadline for enumeration, which is the initial registration of voters.
According to the report, while the official rules gave local election officers a formal deadline to include voters in the draft list, the instructions sent out through WhatsApp or online video conferences preponed these dates, asking officials to mark voters “absent” even before the deadline passed.
The informal messages also stated that the election officers were to complete the three home visits, which is compulsory in the written rules, within the advanced timeframe before marking a voter absent under this new date. These instructions were verified by the Reporters’ Collective.
Several officials reported that they were informed that ECI would give them a “roll back” option, for cases where voters were rashly removed from the draft roll (preliminary list open to correction) but appeared before the actual deadline. However, the roll back option was never provided for the database.
Meaning, voters removed prematurely were never listed in the draft roll or the final one, either.
Notably, government regulations restrict these officers from conducting the SIR process through informal communications. These regulations maintain that every order and communication is to be strictly logged in official records or the established filing systems to guarantee accountability and transparency.
The ECI had previously scrapped its existing voter registration manual and introduced SIR, calling it a “purification” exercise. And although the initial orders when SIR was launched were made public, the ECI issued additional instructions and rules to state officials that were never disclosed to the public.
These renewed orders heavily impacted how voters could re-register on the list and controlled how election officials on the ground would, in turn, verify these voters’ right to be on the draft list, the report alleges.
While there are times when urgent instructions are given out orally or through informal means, regulations require even these orders to be put down on official records.
The report said that the messages were sent on a WhatsApp group consisting of West Bengal’s CEO and District Magistrates designated as District Electoral Officers (DEOs). The messages are believed to have been sent during the enumeration phase, while the WhatsApp group has existed for a long time.
Even though the use of such messaging apps in government has become a norm, the Union Government using them to bend the laws was not a usual occurrence.
Additionally, the ECI deploying “undocumented” software during the enumeration coincided with the use of informal channels for instructions.
Reports at the time indicated that the software had malfunctioned, leaving over 3.66 crore coters as “suspicious” in two states alone. When the software flags voters under the “logical discrepancies,” the voters are to prove that they are eligible voters by furnishing documents, even with publicised regulations for SIR’s second phase do not require them to.
When the software was launched, the ECI had reportedly told the Supreme Court that it was opposed to the computerised system since its software was defective.
When the enumeration phase ended, the CEO of West Bengal’s office had admitted to state officials that the software used to flag suspicious voters was not functioning how thy wanted it to. This was because the base data of the 2002 voter list had never been accurately digitised.
District election officers were informed that some electors might not be called for a hearing, even if notices had been issued based on the software’s findings.
The state officials told The Collective, “Two sets of voters now have to prove their citizenship and voter rights instead of one. The ones who said they or their relatives were not on the 2002 voter list and those who said they were, but the software, with all its problems, still flagged as suspicious.”
Moreover, the software was reportedly altered to decrease the number of voters labelled suspicious.
“Both sets of voters now have to prove their voting rights afresh with documents, though the SIR was carried out by ECI, claiming only those who were not ‘mapped’ to the 2002 list would be,” the state official added.
The state officials further said that they can no longer ascertain which orders are coming directly from the state CEO’s office and which are from the ECI.
They questioned who is to be held accountable if such instructions “wrongfully extinguish voters’ rights,” highlighting the anxiety these officials live with.
Another official alleged that voters in West Bengal faced a higher level of review when compared to other states.
This post was last modified on January 15, 2026 9:24 pm