# EC dissent row: Bengal SIR concerns flagged but unheeded, sources say 2026-09-24T06:02:27+00:00 | Governance | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 3 independent outlets Months before two Election Commissioners formally objected to the Election Commission's handling of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, election officials in West Bengal had internally raised concerns about software-generated logical discrepancies, changing instructions, and restrictions on field officers' ability to function, sources in the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer's office told The Federal. The concerns were documented in memos dated December 27 and 29, 2025, which noted that the digital system was marking electors as 'unmapped' even when hard copies of the 2002 electoral roll showed a linkage, potentially generating wrongful hearing notices. Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi has questioned the legality and necessity of the SIR exercise, arguing that India's electoral rolls have been effectively maintained for decades, The Hindu reported. Meanwhile, The News Minute reported that the SIR has flagged 92,87,577 electors in Telangana alone as either 'unmapped' or having anomalies, and that system-generated discrepancies are being treated as grounds for citizenship doubt rather than as starting points for verification. The Supreme Court's 1995 judgment in Lal Babu Hussain, which held that a person whose name is on the roll must be told why a citizenship doubt has arisen, provides relevant procedural safeguards. ## Indian Opinion Analysis All three sources adopt a critical stance toward the Election Commission's conduct of the SIR, but they diverge in emphasis. The Federal foregrounds the paper trail of internal warnings from Bengal officials that went unheeded, presenting the dissent as a systemic failure. The Hindu elevates a former CEC's legal and procedural critique, lending the criticism institutional credibility. The News Minute amplifies the human impact, using Telangana's 92.87 lakh flagged electors to argue that data discrepancies are being conflated with citizenship doubts, a practice the Supreme Court has warned against. None of the sources engages with the EC's stated rationale for the SIR, creating an impression of one-sided coverage. The cumulative effect is a narrative that the SIR is procedurally unsound and poorly managed, but the absence of an official EC response leaves the story incomplete. The key test will be whether the EC addresses these documented concerns before the next phase of the exercise. ## Coverage - thefederal.com (government critical) Leads with officials' frustration that their flagged concerns were ignored, framing EC as unresponsive - thehindu.com (government critical) Former CEC Quraishi questions legality and necessity of SIR, implicitly criticising current EC - thenewsminute.com (government critical) Focuses on ordinary voters affected by discrepancies, framing SIR as procedurally flawed and alarming Tags: Election Commission, ERONET, S Y Quraishi, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, Vivek Joshi, West Bengal Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/bengal-sir-flaws-echo-ec-dissent-as-software-glitches-persist/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/bengal-sir-flaws-echo-ec-dissent-as-software-glitches-persist/#story-in-brief