Mamata Banerjee moves Supreme Court for holding polls in WB as per existing electoral rolls instead of SIR

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) before the Supreme Court to challenge Election Commission of India (ECI)'s decision to hold a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the State..Expressing an apprehension of immediate and irreversible threat of mass disenfranchisement of eligible voters in the upcoming state assembly elections, Banerjee has sought a direction that the polls be conducted on the basis of the existing rolls prepared last year.She has also prayed that the electoral authorities be directed that the cases involving name mismatches or spelling variations in the 'logical discrepancy' category not be called for hearing during the ongoing SIR process.All such name corrections must be carried out suo motu on the basis of available records, she has said. She has also prayed that all documents issued by competent authorities as identification proof be accepted.“The Petitioner reasonably apprehends that elections to the Legislative Assembly of West Bengal will be immediately declared thereafter as the term of Assembly comes to an end on or about 07.05.2026. This is the ultimate act of injustice as it will practically freeze the voters list for West Bengal with the large-scale disenfranchisement, errors and omissions caused due to the opaque, hasty, unconstitutional and illegal actions of the ECI described hereinbelow without any time for grievance redressal in view of shortage of time,” her plea states..In the plea filed through advocate Kunal Mimani, Banerjee has said that the ongoing SIR will lead to disenfranchisement of lakh of voters and, thus disrupt the level playing field for political parties in the elections.“The entire SIR exercise is an effort at disenfranchising the existing voters on the Electoral Roll by forcing them to prove their citizenship with “documentary” evidence against an arbitrary cut-off date of 2002. This violates the Constitution, the Representation of the People Acts of 1950 and 1951,” the Trinamool Congress leader has argued.She has also contended that the entire exercise was being undertaken with undue haste in less than 90 days, just before scheduled assembly elections in 2026. She has highlighted various practical problems and loopholes in the ongoing process.Allowing the same to go ahead will inevitably result in mass exclusion of voters, particularly poor migrants who regularly travel out of the State as seasonal workers, her plea alleges.“ECI has turned the entire SIR exercise into a battlefield for voters who are scrambling through arbitrary rejection of documents, illogical hearings, inconsistent instructions, opaque rules, shifting stands and complete chaos caused by untested algorithm and software deployed by ECI,” the plea adds..She also has alleged that despite the Supreme Court’s clear directions against it in petitions challenging the SIR, instructions are being issued to electoral officers through WhatsApp messages. Further, she has alleged that the list of people put in the ‘logical discrepancy’ category has not been uploaded online.“In addition, alarming news have been received from certain Districts including Malda that 20,000 new Logical Discrepancy category cases have been pushed from ‘others’ category to Logical Discrepancy category on the morning of 22.01.2026 which shows a nefarious plan of the Respondent to increase the number of LD cases after order was passed by this Hon’ble Court on 19.01.2026 and then publish a mammoth list of Logical Discrepancy cases. This is highly illegal and in brazen impunity of law and disregard of the order of this Hon’ble Court,” the plea adds..Follow Bar and Bench channel on WhatsAppDownload the Bar and Bench Mobile app for instant access to the latest legal news.