Bengal SIR ran on informal WhatsApp orders, against written rules: Report

A Reporters’ Collective report published today, 14 January, has found that West Bengal’s chief electoral officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal issued key instructions for the state’s special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls through informal WhatsApp messages, altering how the revision was conducted and, in several instances, contradicting written Election Commission of India (ECI) orders.

These allegations were first raised before the Supreme Court by the state's ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) via a petition moved by its Parliamentary party leader Derek O’Brien. The Reporters’ Collective independently verified the content of the WhatsApp instructions with multiple state officials and a source within the ECI. The Supreme Court has since issued a notice to the Commission in response to O’Brien’s plea.

The Reporters’ Collective also confirmed through three officials that during virtual coordination meetings, some state officers requested that the Bengal CEO issue formal written orders to clarify or modify procedures. Instead, critical directions arrived through WhatsApp.

According to The Reporters’ Collective’s verification, at least two WhatsApp instructions stood out for contradicting existing written rules:

1. Advancing the enumeration cut-off date

2. Directing officials to mark voters absent before that new date, after completing the mandated three home visits

Under formal rules, local election officers had time until the official deadline to include eligible voters in the draft rolls. The WhatsApp orders, however, pre-empted that deadline, and asked officers to begin marking voters absent earlier — without any accompanying written amendment.

Two officials showed the messages to The Reporters’ Collective; a third corroborated having received them.

Multiple officials told The Reporters’ Collective they had been assured of a “roll-back” feature in the digital system, so that voters prematurely excluded during enumeration could be reinstated before the formal cut-off. This feature never materialised, leaving wrongly removed voters with no institutional safety net.

Government rules explicitly prohibit operating on the basis of informal or undocumented instructions. All orders affecting administrative action — including those by the ECI — must be placed on official files to guarantee traceability and public accountability.

At the same time, The Reporters’ Collective has documented that the ECI discarded its existing voter registration manual for the SIR, labelling the exercise a once-in-decades 'purification' drive. While initial orders launching the SIR were public, dozens of subsequent operational instructions were never published. These shaped how citizens were expected to re-register, and how field teams evaluated claims to voter rights.

This diverged sharply from past practice, where the ECI publicly disclosed every procedural step of voter registration. The Reporters’ Collective notes that the shift to oral and informal instructions via private messaging groups marks a deeper departure — one of the first documented instances of senior ECI officials operating in a procedural black box.

There are circumstances in which oral or rapid instructions may be issued. But regulations require such directions to be formally recorded later. The Reporters’ Collective asked the ECI and the West Bengal CEO whether the WhatsApp instructions were later entered into official records. They did not respond.

The ECI and Bengal CEO also did not answer detailed queries from The Reporters’ Collective regarding WhatsApp usage, nor did they provide copies of the orders at the time of filing the report.

The collective’s earlier investigations showed that during enumeration, the ECI deployed a non-public, undocumented software tool that flagged voters with 'logical discrepancies'. The software malfunctioned, initially branding over 3.66 crore voters as suspicious in just two states. Once flagged, voters had to prove their citizenship and eligibility with documents — despite the written SIR rules not requiring this during that phase.

Notably, neither the ECI headquarters nor the Bengal CEO had publicly mentioned the software in their initial orders. Less than two weeks before activating it, the ECI told the Supreme Court it was against using computerised tools for detecting fraudulent voters due to defective software.

On 29 December, after enumeration ended, the Bengal CEO’s office admitted on record that the “logical discrepancy” software was malfunctioning because the 2002 voter list — its base dataset — was poorly digitised. At this point, written rules were changed again, informing DEOs that some electors would not be called for hearings even if notices had already been issued based on the faulty software.

The software was later tweaked to reduce the number of voters labelled suspicious.

One senior state official told The Reporters’ Collective: “Now two sets of voters must prove their citizenship and voting rights: those not mapped to the 2002 list, and those mapped but still flagged by the malfunctioning software.”

Another official remarked that it had become unclear whether orders originated from the Bengal CEO or the ECI headquarters, making accountability opaque: “If any of these instructions wrongly extinguish voters’ rights, who will be held accountable?”

A third official claimed that scrutiny in West Bengal was tougher than in other SIR states, noting that hearings required photo evidence, micro-observers, and were restricted to just 160 centres — a logistical bottleneck for lakhs of voters.