Tamil Nadu MP, Sasikanth Senthil. File | Photo credit: The Hindu
The Congress on Tuesday (December 30, 2025) questioned the Election Commission of India (ECI) accusing it of making arbitrary changes in the process of conducting Special Intensive Review (SIR) of electoral rolls in 12 states and demanded full transparency. The party also flagged targeted vote deletion in the states of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
At a press conference at the party headquarters in Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and former bureaucrat Sasikanth Senthil said the ECI had made several “turns” in its protocols for the SIR. Citing one such case, Mr. Senthil said the “deduplication” software, which was used until 2023 to detect any duplicate voter ID cards, was discontinued during the SIR exercise in Bihar, with the ECI saying it was not “reliable”. It has now been reintroduced due to the ongoing revision in 12 states, Mr. Senthil said.
Citing newly emerging figures from the ongoing revision, he said more than 32 million voters in West Bengal were “not mapped” while logical discrepancies included more than 1.7 million entries. In Tamil Nadu, he said around 97 million votes were deleted, including nearly six million in his own constituency (Tiruvallur).
The ECI was conducting the SIR process on a ‘hit-and-trial’ basis as it had not issued any clear instructions to Cabin Level Officers (BLOs) nor had they been given any training. The BLOs had no instructions on what to do about duplicate voters and it was left to their discretion, Mr. Senthil said.
“The ECI must come up with clear and transparent instructions on the SIR, especially the process and criteria for deletion of voters from the electoral rolls,” Mr. Senthil said. The BLOs faced several “logical inconsistencies”, including an age difference of more than 40 years or less than 18 years between parent and child.
“The worst hit in this experiment will be the poor and marginalized sections of the society,” Mr. Senthil added, questioning the haste shown by the ECI as opposed to the staggered manner in which electoral rolls were revised in the past.
Published – 30 Dec 2025 21:11 IST
