West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has moved the Supreme Court against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls being conducted by the Election Commission ahead of the April 2026 Assembly elections in the state.She alleged that the SIR exercise was being conducted in West Bengal in a hurried and partisan manner.Earlier, Banerjee had written to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar complaining that the SIR process violated provisions of the Representation of the Peoples Act and the rules thereunder.She had warned that the SIR in the present form could trigger “mass disenfranchisement” and “strike at the foundations of democracy”.In her January 3 letter to CEC Kumar, Banerjee had accused the poll panel of presiding over an “unplanned, ill-prepared and ad hoc” SIR process marked by “serious irregularities, procedural violations and administrative lapses”.The top court was already seized of a plea filed by TMC MPs Derek O Brien and Dola Sen who accused the poll panel of issuing informal instructions to the electoral officers on WhatsApp.The Supreme Court had on January 12 asked the Election Commission to respond to pleas filed by the two TMC MPs alleging arbitrariness and procedural irregularities on the part of the Election Commission in the ongoing SIR process of electoral rolls in West Bengal.A Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi had issued notice to the poll panel after senior counsel Kapil Sibal, representing the TMC MPs, submitted that very weird procedures were being followed in West Bengal and instructions related were being issued through social media platforms such as WhatsApp, making BLOs act without any formal orders.The EC has introduced a ‘logical discrepancy’ category of voters, who may be issued notice for a quasi-judicial hearing on their eligibility over errors or anomalies in the voter details, Sibal pointed out.The Bench had asked the poll panel to respond to the petition in a week after the EC counsel sought two weeks to file its counter affidavit.In his plea, O’Brien alleged that since the inception of the SIR process in West Bengal, the poll panel issued instructions to officers at the ground level through “informal and extra-statutory channels”, such as WhatsApp messages and oral directions conveyed during video conferences, instead of issuing formal written instructions.“The ECI cannot act arbitrarily, capriciously or dehors law, nor can it substitute legally prescribed and set procedures with ad hoc or informal mechanisms,” O’Brien said in an application filed in his pending petition challenging the EC’s order and guidelines on SIR.