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The Supreme Court on Monday (February 9, 2026) said the Election Commission (EC) is using “very restrictive” software tools, at least in the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise in West Bengal, with scant tolerance for “natural” differences and inconsistencies commonly found in India, including Bengali households.
“Tools applied by you in your software appear to be very restrictive tools. They are eliminating natural differences. Surnames are of various forms — ‘Roy’, ‘Ray’... There is a common practice of ‘Kumar’ being a middle name in Bengali households. Now, if there is an omission of ‘Kumar’, notice is given?” Justice Joymalya Bagchi asked the EC’s counsel, senior advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu.
Highlights of Supreme Court’s hearing on SIR
The exchange came before the Bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant, asked the EC to extend the deadline for the claims-and-objections phase of the West Bengal SIR for a week beyond the current deadline of February 14.
The Bench further directed the State’s Director General of Police to file a personal affidavit, responding to allegations of orchestrated violence and burning of documents at SIR verification centres.
‘Deploy new officials’
The court asked the EC to temporarily deploy a fresh batch of 8,505 personnel provided by the West Bengal government, on the basis of an assurance given to the Bench personally by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during her personal appearance before it on the February 4 hearing, for SIR work.
The court said the EC could deploy suitable officers among the fresh batch for duties as Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs). The remaining could be made to work along with micro-observers to assist in the scrutiny of documents.
The court clarified that micro-observers would only assist the EROs. It would be solely up to the EROs to take a final decision on whether an elector should be included or excluded from the electoral roll of the State.
The hearing commenced with the West Bengal Chief Minister’s counsel, senior advocate Shyam Divan, submitting that micro-observers were superseding EROs and AEROs to decide the fate of electors on the voters’ list. Senior advocate A.M. Singhvi, for the West Bengal government, said micro-observers were drawn from Central government services and public sector undertakings with no ground knowledge of West Bengal or its idiosyncrasies.
On ‘logical discrepancies’
Mr. Divan submitted that of the nearly 1.4 crore people who came under the “logical discrepancies” category, 70 lakh were called to explain minor disparities in their names or even surnames. “Logical discrepancies” included name mismatches, inconsistencies in the age gaps of their parents and grandparents and even persons with six children were called for hearing. He said all these electors were issued hearing notices despite being mapped, that is, they could be traced to the 2002 electoral roll.
“They just ran a computer programme... There have been mass exclusions in the name of logical discrepancies. Here, the computer has become a tyrant, deciding with the use of some software, who remains and who has to be purged,” Mr. Divan submitted.
Mr. Naidu, for the EC, remarked orally that the petitioners — State of West Bengal, its Chief Minister and leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress Party — were making a “mountain out of a molehill”.
But Justice Bagchi agreed with Mr. Divan that even those mapped had been called for presentation of documents to verify citizenship. The judge said the programme used by the EC in certain cases has created a “policy challenge” without understanding the ground realities, resulting in notices going out to a “wider net of people”.
Mr. Naidu said the court was only seeing the “tip of the iceberg”. He illustrated that the EC scrutiny of the electoral roll had instances of 200 people being linked to a single parent.
“Is that possible?” he asked the Bench. Mr. Naidu denied sending notices to persons mapped to the 2002 rolls. “No questions were asked, My Lords,” he stressed.
“But questions were asked, Sir. Notices were sent to mapped people,” Justice Bagchi persisted.
Mr. Naidu changed tack to submit that then those names may have been “mapped incorrectly”. He insisted that no clarification had been sought from electors whose particulars “synced perfectly”.
“You definitely have a right to send a hearing notice to people found with 50 grandchildren. But you are issuing notice to even persons with five or six children,” Justice Bagchi responded.
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