Overview
- The Election Commission deployed five additional Special Roll Observers in West Bengal to oversee the next phase of the Special Intensive Revision across the Presidency, Midnapore, Burdwan, Malda and Jalpaiguri divisions.
- EC data from West Bengal show about 55.45 lakh unmatched entries flagged against 2002 records, including roughly 23.83 lakh recorded as dead, 10.50 lakh untraceable, 19.35 lakh shifted and 1.28 lakh marked bogus.
- Parliament opened a time-limited debate on election reforms, with Rahul Gandhi leading in the Lok Sabha and Amit Shah expected to lead in the Rajya Sabha, as 10 hours were set aside across both Houses.
- Opposition leaders questioned the legality of conducting SIR at scale, sought reforms to the EC selection process, cited stress and reported deaths among Booth Level Officers, and pressed for either full VVPAT matching or a return to paper ballots.
- The government, led by Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal, defended SIR as a lawful, decades-old practice validated by the Supreme Court, as the process heads into claims, objections and notice hearings with final rolls targeted for publication in February 2026, including directives for ‘progeny’ mapping to verify entries.