Thousands of people have been served with SIR notices because they got involved with someone with an “unusually high number of children”. File | Photo credit: PTI
All six members of the family of Altamish Faraz Khan, a resident of Ward 61 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), have been served with a hearing notice under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Four of them were served with notices based on mapping themselves as the sons/daughters of someone six others claim to be the father.
Mr Khan and his brothers and sister appeared for the hearing as directed by their cabin level officer (BLO). “We realized that it was nothing but an arbitrary exercise even after we contacted our mother, whose name was on the electoral roll in 2002,” Mr Khan said.
Thousands of people have been served with SIR notices because they got involved with someone with an “unusually high number of children”. In an open letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, West Bengal Congress Committee President Subhankar Sarkar raised the issue of “unusually high number of children”.
“An unusually high number of children”
Mr. Sarkar cited an Election Commission of India (EC) affidavit filed in the Supreme Court on January 18 to point out that the number of voters with six or more electors associated with them as children was 2,06,056. While the number of voters with 10 electors associated with children was only 8,682.
“From the above table, it can be seen that the number of suspect voters identified on the basis of the number of children associated with the affected voters varies significantly depending on the threshold chosen by the ECI. If the threshold of ‘unusually high number of children’ were 10, the number of suspect voters who would issue hearing notices would be only 8,682,” the Congress chief wrote in the letter.
The Trinamool Congress also raised the issue of voters being asked to appear before the EC for a hearing on the grounds that they had associated with someone who had an “abnormally high number of children”.
“EC age threshold arbitrary”
“We feel that the ECI has arbitrarily chosen the age limits to maximize the number of suspect voters based on the so-called ‘logical inconsistencies’ of the criteria based on inconsistencies in age relationships, multiple claims of parentage, spelling inconsistencies, etc.,” Mr. Sarkar wrote in the letter.
He pointed out that such an initiative by the EC resulted in more than one million voters already included in the draft voter list receiving hearing notices.
After the completion of the first phase of SIR, about 58 lakh names were cleared in West Bengal, taking the number of voters in the state to 7.08 lakh from 7.66 lakh. There have been violent protests against the issuance of notices to voters under the “logical contradictions” category. About 1.36 million such notices of logical inconsistencies have been issued.
Referring to the Supreme Court’s January 19 order that introduced several “logical contradictions” amendments, the Congress leader said they have not been implemented yet.
The Congress leader demanded an adjournment of the hearing on the notices served on what he called “logical inconsistencies” and sought an all-party meeting before proceeding further.
Published – 23 Jan 2026 20:55 IST
