Spokesperson: Shri Shashikanth Senthil, MP: He specifically referred to the U-turns made by the ECI on the ‘de-duplication’ software. He said the ECI used this software till 2023, but did not use it in the Bihar SIR for the reason that it was not foolproof. Then, he added, the ECI has again introduced the same software for the ongoing SIR in 12 states. The Congress Party demanded transparency and clarity from the Election Commission of India about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in 12 states.

The Party also flagged the targeted deletion of votes in the states of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Shri Shashikant Senthil suggested that the ECI was carrying out the SIR process in a hit-and-trial manner as it had not issued any clear instructions to the Booth Level Officers, nor were they given any training. He said that the BLOs did not have any instructions regarding what to do about the duplicate voters and it had been left to their own judgment. He demanded that the ECI must come out with clear and transparent instructions about the SIR, particularly about the process and the yardsticks for deleting voters from the electoral rolls. He said there was a lack of transparency in the process, which was creating strong doubts among people.

Similarly, the Spokesperson referred to various “logical discrepancies” to be identified by the BLOs. He said that the BLOs were again left at sea as to how to deal with such logical discrepancies like the age gap between the parent and child of more than 40 years or less than 18 years.

Referring to emerging figures from the ongoing revision, he said that over 32 lakh voters in West Bengal were “unmapped”, while logical discrepancies involved more than 1.7 crore entries. In Tamil Nadu, he said around 97 lakh votes had been deleted, including nearly six lakh in his own constituency.

Senthil cited investigative reports which found that the Bihar SIR was conducted without the mandatory de-duplication process, resulting in around 14.5 lakh duplicate voters remaining on the electoral rolls. He said that the Election Commission, which had made 100 per cent de-duplication compulsory in its 2023 manual, abandoned the process in Bihar and later re-introduced it in the second phase of SIR in 12 states, without any public explanation. Tuesday, December 30, 2025.