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Key Points
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, cricketer Mohammed Shami and actor-MP Dev were cited by the Trinamool Congress as having received SIR hearing notices. The Election Commission later said Sen’s case was due to a spelling mismatch in the database and did not require his appearance, but notices to Shami and Dev triggered sharp political criticism.
Beyond celebrities, the Election Commission plans hearings for over 24 lakh voters in West Bengal over suspected “logical discrepancies” in parentage and age links, while hearings are already under way for about 32 lakh “unmapped” voters unable to link themselves to earlier electoral rolls.
The dispute is rooted in new ECI software that flagged more than 1 crore voters in Bengal as suspicious based on digitised 20-year-old rolls. Critics say the algorithms are untested, criteria unclear, and written instructions missing, raising concerns about errors and the protection of voters’ rights.
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal has triggered a political and administrative storm after hearing notices were reportedly issued to several high profile public figures, including Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, cricketer Mohammed Shami, and actor turned Trinamool Congress MP Dev. The development has intensified the ongoing confrontation between the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Election Commission of India (ECI) over the manner in which the voter list revision is being conducted in the state.
The controversy broke after TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee claimed at a public rally in Birbhum district that several well known personalities had been served hearing notices under the SIR exercise. According to Banerjee, the list included Sen, Shami and Dev, which he cited as evidence of the Election Commission’s “targeting” of West Bengal voters.
Within hours of the claim, Election Commission sources sought to play down the issue, saying that the notice linked to Amartya Sen was the result of a spelling mismatch in the enumeration form. According to these sources, the system had automatically generated a notice because of the discrepancy, but Sen would not be required to appear for a hearing. The Commission has reportedly asked the concerned Booth Level Officer (BLO) to correct the error. Sources associated with Amartya Sen’s trust also said that no SIR notice had been received at his residence in Bolpur.
Sen, who votes in Shantiniketan constituency, continues to hold a valid voter identity card and last cast his ballot in 2014. Despite the clarification, the TMC maintained that the episode underlined flaws in the SIR process and questioned how such notices could be issued to voters of Sen’s stature without basic verification.
The controversy widened further after confirmation that Mohammed Shami and Dev, also known as Deepak Adhikari, had indeed received hearing notices in Kolkata. Shami, who was born in Uttar Pradesh but has long been settled in West Bengal because of his cricket career, is a registered voter in the Jadavpur constituency. His hearing was scheduled for 5 January 2026, but he could not attend because of prior commitments to a cricket tournament. Election Commission officials in the state said a fresh date would be fixed.
Dev, a three time MP from Ghatal, was born in West Bengal but later moved to Mumbai for his acting career before settling in Kolkata. Reports indicated that three of his family members had also received notices. The date for his hearing had not been finalised at the time of reporting. Neither Shami nor Dev has issued a public statement on the matter.
TMC leaders reacted sharply, calling the notices symptomatic of what they described as the “unpreparedness” and “haste” with which the SIR was being implemented. Jay Prakash Majumdar, TMC State Vice President and spokesperson, said the process was eroding the credibility of the ECI as an impartial institution. He also pointed to hearing notices issued to other cultural figures in the state, including veteran poet Joy Goswami and actor Anirban Bhattacharya.
Amid the escalating dispute, the TMC moved the Supreme Court, accusing the ECI of conducting the SIR exercise in an unorganised, non-transparent and haphazard manner. The party has demanded greater clarity on the criteria used to issue notices and has questioned the scale at which voters are being summoned.
Beyond individual high profile cases, Election Commission sources have indicated that the scope of hearings in West Bengal is far larger. Speaking to The Telegraph, official sources revealed that more than 24 lakh voters in the state are set to be summoned for hearings and document verification because of what the Commission describes as “suspicious” parent linkage patterns.
These voters are part of a larger group of 1.67 crore electors initially flagged for “logical discrepancies” in their enumeration forms. After verification by BLOs, this number has reportedly been reduced to 1.18 crore. The 24.21 lakh now identified for hearings are those where multiple voters, often six or more, have linked themselves to the same parent listed in the 2002 voter rolls, raising doubts about the plausibility of such family structures.
Election officials have also flagged cases where age gaps between voters and their listed parents or grandparents are either too narrow or too wide to be credible. According to Commission sources, around 11.95 lakh voters have cited parents who are only 15 years or less older than them, while another 8.77 lakh show age gaps of more than 50 years. An additional 3.29 lakh voters have linked themselves to grandparents less than 40 years older than them. These cases may also be called for hearings in the coming weeks.
Separately, hearings are already under way for nearly 32 lakh “unmapped” voters who could not link themselves or their parents or grandparents to the previous post SIR rolls. For most of West Bengal, this reference roll dates back to 2002. Officials have said hearings for unmapped voters are likely to continue until around 10 January, after which hearings for logical discrepancy cases will begin.
At the heart of the controversy lies the Election Commission’s use of new software tools during the SIR exercise. According to The Reporters’ Collective, untested and undocumented algorithms were used to flag voters for “logical discrepancies” based on digitised versions of two decade old voter lists. In West Bengal alone, the software initially marked around 1.31 crore voters as suspicious, roughly 17% of the state’s electorate. This figure later dropped to about 95 lakh after internal verifications, though no public explanation has been provided on how over 30 lakh cases were resolved.
The software reportedly flagged voters where multiple electors linked themselves to the same ancestor, where age gaps fell outside defined ranges, where names did not exactly match older rolls, or where gender markers appeared inconsistent. Critics have pointed out that the digitisation of old voter lists was carried out hastily, without quality audits, and with no formal guidelines, increasing the risk of false flags.
Election Commission regulations require that doubts about a voter’s eligibility be resolved through ground verification and formal hearings. However, officials on the ground have said they have not received written instructions on what evidence would suffice to clear a computer generated discrepancy. In meetings with state and district level officers, requests for clear written guidance on resolving logical discrepancies have reportedly gone unanswered.
The controversy surrounding notices to prominent figures such as Amartya Sen, Mohammed Shami and Dev has thus become emblematic of a much larger issue. As the SIR exercise continues, doubts remain about the reliability of the software used, the transparency of the criteria applied, and the safeguards in place to protect the voting rights of electors flagged by opaque processes.
[DS]
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