The Election Commission has directed district election officers and electoral registration officers across the state to carry out booth-wise progeny mapping after detecting widespread discrepancies in parental information submitted in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) forms for the 2025 electoral rolls.
According to officials, the inconsistencies, potentially affecting up to 30 lakh voters, emerged when large numbers of voters listed in the 2025 rolls but absent from the 2002 rolls claimed parental links to voters from 2002. 
In many cases, the parental names they declared in their enumeration forms contradicted the names already recorded in current electoral data.
&ldquo;As the number of such cases is very high, the poll panel could not bypass it,&rdquo; a bureaucrat said.
How the Issue Was Flagged
The IT team at Nirvachan Sadan in Delhi detected the discrepancies while digitising enumeration forms submitted by 7.66 crore voters statewide. 
The matter was escalated to Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal, whose office conducted sample checks that revealed similar inconsistencies across nearly all polling booths.
&ldquo;The discrepancy has been flagged by the IT team in Delhi and some other sample cases were sent to the Bengal CEO for his consideration. After a sample check, it was found that the problem existed in almost all the booths,&rdquo; an official said.
Booth-Level Verification Ordered
Booth-level officers (BLOs) will now visit the homes of affected voters to determine why parental names differ between the 2025 rolls and the freshly submitted SIR forms. 
Their findings must be submitted to assistant electoral registration officers or EROs within seven days.
If any such names still appear in the draft rolls, voters will be called for hearings to explain the mismatches.
An ERO from Murshidabad noted that while some discrepancies may stem from genuine mistakes, many appear intentional. 
Officials suggested that certain individuals, lacking original documents or added to the rolls after 2002, may have attempted to link themselves to 2002 voters to avoid verification.
&ldquo;The EC has declared that voters who figured in 2002 lists and their children would not be required to submit any paper or face hearings during the special intensive revision of rolls,&rdquo; an official said. 
&ldquo;Now, voters who don&rsquo;t have the required papers or somehow managed to get their names in the electoral rolls after 2002 are desperately trying to avoid hearing by linking their names with the voters of the 2002 rolls.&rdquo;
Scale of the Discrepancies
Pre-SIR mapping suggested that about 2.4 crore names were common to both the 2002 and 2025 rolls, and officials estimated that another 2 crore voters could legitimately establish links as progeny of those listed in 2002. 
However, once 97.34% of forms were digitised, the number of people claiming such links far exceeded expectations.
&ldquo;It appears that many more voters have linked themselves with the 2002 rolls than the estimated number. The sample checking revealed that there were several mismatches,&rdquo; an official said.
The EC has ordered immediate corrective steps to ensure the accuracy of the 2025 rolls ahead of the Assembly elections.

BLO verifies voter records for parental mismatches

EC detects large-scale voter-parent mismatches, orders urgent booth-level verification

EC Orders Mapping To Fix Voter Mismatches

EC detects large-scale voter-parent mismatches, orders urgent booth-level verification

December 3, 2025 | 15:29 IST