The officers felt that minor AI-generated discrepancies — most of which are not the voter’s fault — are leading to harassment of voters, which could have been avoided. “A former EC official who worked in Bengal filled his surname as Roychoudhury. In his documents, Roy and Choudhury are different words. He too was served with a hearing notice,” an observer said. The observer also said that he came across a complaint by Draupadi Giri, a voter of Behala West. She was slapped with a SIR hearing notice and asked to clarify why, in her EPIC, her father’s name was Nanda Nayek, while in the SIR 2002 it was Nandalal Nayek. “There is no point dragging her to a hearing,” the officer said. The Election Commission officers pointed out that minor mismatches in names, ages, addresses, or family details are grounds for a hearing, which is creating chaos. An officer also pointed out that many voters who have their names in the SIR 2002 list are in trouble if the BLO was not able to match the name in the 2002 SIR, as several assembly constituencies changed due to the delimitation of 2006. Many from outside Bengal too were served notice, as the BLOs lack data from outside Bengal where SIR took place in 2003. This disparity sparked serious questions about the EC’s internal coordination. Swapan Mondal, secretary of BLO Aikya Manch, said that they submitted a memorandum to the Bengal CEO, Manoj Agarwal, for giving a waiver to voters with minor discrepancies which can be easily corrected by the BLOs, but instead, a hearing notice is issued. “Even after submitting documents, the voters are summoned, which is also illogical,” he said. He added that the BLOs in the BLO App can see the logical discrepancies, so they can rectify them, but they are not empowered to do so.
