Mamata Fights SIR With AI

The TMC claims to unearth anomalies in the voter list by marrying technology with ground power

- By Arkamoy Datta Majumdar

IN INDIA'S DEMOCRACY, the electorate is primary capital. And the means of controlling this resource these days, it seems, is statistical. It was therefore inevitable, in the day and age of big data, that any exercise involving massive statistical sets would also turn technological. The only unlikely element, at first sight, would seem to be the protagonist: the street-savvy Mamata Banerjee. But the circumstances are compelling enough for her to turn her party, the Trinamool Congress, towards a spot of machine learning.

The West Bengal CM had sounded the alarm around voter lists in her state in early 2025 itself, months before the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar. She warned of large-scale anomalies, alleging genuine voters were being deleted while “outsiders” were being quietly added.

But she didn't stop at red-flagging the issue. The Trinamool soon put spurs on an initiative. '