West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday urged the Election Commission to suspend the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the state, saying “the human cost of this mismanagement is now unbearable”, ANI reported.

Banerjee in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said that the process had reached an “alarming” and “dangerous” stage, emphasising that the manner in which it was being carried out was unplanned, chaotic, and putting citizens and officials at risk.

The chief minister’s appeal followed her earlier request to suspend the exercise after booth level officers in the state died by suicide allegedly due to work pressure.

Banerjee accused the office of the West Bengal chief electoral officer of intimidating the booth level officers, ANI reported.

She wrote that several booth level officers, fearful of punitive action, were being pushed to submit incomplete or incorrect entries, which she warned could lead to the disenfranchisement of genuine voters.

She added that instead of rectifying systemic flaws or extending deadlines, show-cause notices were being issued without due justification.

Banerjee said the process, which typically takes three years, had been compressed into three months, creating “inhuman working conditions”.

“The unrealistic workload, impossible timelines and inadequate support with online data entry have collectively placed the entire process – and its credibility – at severe risk,” the Trinamool Congress chief said. “This strikes at the heart of our electoral democracy.”

The Bharatiya Janata Party rejected the concerns raised by the chief minister and alleged the Trinamool Congress and Banerjee are opposing the exercise because they have “benefited from illegal infiltration and bogus voters”.

The party’s National Spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari described Banerjee’s letter as a sign of desperation and “an admission that TMC’s top leadership is rattled”.

Amit Malviya, the party’s co-in-charge for West Bengal, alleged that Banerjee was opposing the exercise because “her political arithmetic collapses” without “these fraudulent voters”.

In a separate social media post, Malviya alleged that Banerjee won “successive mandates in West Bengal on the strength of votes cast by illegal Bangladeshi Muslims and Rohingyas”.

West Bengal is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the Election Commission began the enumeration phase of the exercise on November 4.

In addition to West Bengal, the voter rolls are also being revised in Kerala, Rajasthan, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Puducherry, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep.

Assembly polls are expected to take place in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry in the first half of 2026.

The task of preparing voter lists before elections is typically assigned to primary school teachers and anganwadi or health care workers, who are employed by state governments. They are required to go door-to-door and check the identities of new voters and verify the details of those who have died or permanently moved out of an area.

In the commission’s parlance, they are called booth-level officers. Each booth-level officer is responsible for maintaining the voter list for one polling booth, which can sometimes have as many as 1,500 registered voters.

The draft electoral rolls for the 12 states and Union Territories will be published on December 9. Voters can file claims and objections from December 9 to January 8, while hearings and verifications will take place from December 9 to January 31. The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 7.

Several petitions have been filed before the Supreme Court against the exercise over concerns that the special intensive revision of voter rolls could disenfranchise eligible voters.

The voter list revision in Bihar was completed ahead of the Assembly elections in November. In the final electoral roll published on September 30, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded.

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