Kolkata, Sept. 23 -- Months before an Indian Express report raised questions over the Election Commission's electoral-roll software and the role of its Director General (IT) Seema Khanna, MAITC said it had already flagged similar concerns. The party pointed to national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee's December 2025 allegations over the EC's software and the 1.36 crore "logical discrepancies" identified in West Bengal's electoral roll.
The Indian Express report has now highlighted internal concerns within the poll panel over the alleged centralisation of access to electoral-roll databases. In West Bengal, the investigation reported that 16.10 lakh appeals seeking deletion of voters were filed before tribunals under a single officer's login, while another 22.21 lakh appeals were filed by deleted voters seeking restoration. It also raised questions over who authorised the appeals filed on behalf of the EC. The report further said Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had repeatedly raised concerns over restrictions on the access of statutory election officials to ERONet and ECINet. Sandhu, in August, recorded that state-level officials had reported they did not have "proper and complete access" to ERONet and questioned whether Khanna had the authority to restrict the statutory functions of Electoral Registration Officers.
MAITC recalled Banerjee's December 27, 2025 press conference, where he had questioned the basis for the 1.36 crore figure and the software used to arrive at it. "There are 1.36 crore logical discrepancies. There could be four, six, ten, or even 10,000 cases, but you have stated outright that there are 1.36 crore logical discrepancies," he had said.
Questioning Khanna's role, Banerjee had said: "I have screenshots with me. There is a woman named Seema Khanna. What is her role? At whose behest is she working in Delhi? I have screenshots of her chats as well." He had further claimed that the screenshots showed Khanna acknowledging a software error. "She herself is acknowledging that this happened because of an error in the software," Banerjee had said.
Reacting to the report, MAITC MP Mahua Moitra alleged that Khanna had exercised centralised control over voter lists in Bengal. She alleged that the software was used to add, delete and alter voter names while bypassing officials who had ERONet logins.
The Indian Express investigation also cited Goa, where 97 voters remained excluded from the final electoral roll after a software provision allowing their restoration was not enabled in time. Goa officials had written eight times to the concerned senior EC official, copying Khanna, seeking the rollback facility.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.