Some of the problems with the special intensive revision (SIR) of West Bengal’s voter list (SIR), highlighted by state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, have their roots in the Electoral Registration Officer Network (ERONET) used by the Election Commission of India, senior officials of the election body’s IT department said.
On Wednesday, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee raised some issues with the SIR of West Bengal’s voter list in the SC. (Sudipta Banerjee)The problem is twofold, the officials added, speaking on condition of anonymity: the physical transparency of old records; and translation of 2002 and 2004 records from Bengali to English.
“The system depends a lot on how clean the old records are. If the scanned copies are blurred or faded, the chances of mistakes increase,” said an official.
Other officials said the software first reads old paper voter lists written in Bengali and converts them into English text before comparing names and family details with current voter records. “If the old and new spellings do not match closely enough, the system automatically flags that particular voter for further checking,” said a second official. This is what ECI internally calls a “logical anomaly”. As a result, common spelling differences were flagged, with officials giving examples: a Mohammed becoming a Muhammed; Sheikh is being read as Sheikh in the software; And mandalas appeared as mandalas.
“The software doesn’t understand local language habits or name variations. It only compares differences in spelling and symbols,” the aforementioned official said.
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HT reached out to the EC for a response, but could not get an immediate response
On Wednesday, Mamata told India’s Supreme Court that the SIR process was creating a large number of “logical inconsistencies” due to software problems, thereby flagging genuine voters. The court asked the ECI to clarify the basis for such a national flag and ensure that eligible voters are not excluded.
On Thursday, the ECI wrote to the WB government citing non-cooperation in the SIR exercise and sought an explanation on compliance with its directives, stressing the need for coordination to complete the amendment.
Officials admitted that a heavy reliance on software has reduced the role of Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), who usually correct such spelling or language-related issues during field checks. “Earlier, these small errors could be rectified immediately on the ground. Now, once the system flags the voter, the correction process becomes longer,” the official said. Cyber security expert Srinivas Kodali said such results are to be expected. “When a system only compares text and doesn’t understand language or context, it treats small differences as serious problems,” he said.
ERO Net, developed by the National Informatics Center and launched across the country in 2013-14, was originally designed for voter registration, correction and deletion on a single digital platform. Officials said that while the original system has been in place for more than a decade, new checks linked to SIR were added by the ECI only last year, increasing verification of voter details and leading to a sharp rise in entries marked with “logical anomalies”.
Officials said the problem worsened because changes to the software were made when the SIR exercise was already underway, without stopping field work or issuing clear written instructions. “The software keeps getting updated, but the work on the ground cannot be stopped,” the official said.
