Appearing in the Supreme Court on Wednesday challenging the ongoing the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee criticised the Election Commission of India (ECI) and referred to it as the "WhatsApp Commission".
She claimed that the commission was behind mass deletions of voter names and said that Bengal was being unfairly targeted in the current SIR process.
"The Election Commission… sorry, the WhatsApp Commission… is doing all this. People's names are being deleted. Bengal is being targeted," she told the court.
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Why Bengal alone being singled out, asks CM
The Chief Minister questioned why only her state was being focused on for this scrutiny. She asked why similar actions were not being taken for Assam or other northeastern states. Banerjee made these points to emphasise what she sees as the unfair and politically motivated targeting of her state before elections.
'Married women's names being deleted'
Banerjee told the apex court that the ongoing SIR exercise was being used as a tool for mass deletions instead of real verification. She argued that normal changes in life were being labeled as "mismatches" or "logical discrepancies".
For example, she said that when a woman takes her husband's surname after marriage or moves to her in-laws' home, it gets marked as a discrepancy. Similarly, people who move for work are also being categorised under discrepancy mapping, which she said is causing deletions.
Questioning the need for the exercise, she asked why a process that could have taken two years was rushed into four months. She noted that notices were sent out during peak harvest and festive seasons. Many people were away from their registered addresses, making it difficult for them to respond.
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'I wrote six letters to ECI'
Banerjee stated that the issue went beyond legal arguments. She mentioned that she had written six letters to the Election Commission of India but had not received any response. She clarified that she was not speaking as a political leader but as an ordinary person. She claimed that people were not receiving justice and that "justice is crying behind closed doors."
