West Bengal CEO orders FIRs against five EC officials over voter data breach

Kolkata: West Bengal-CEO's office has instructed two District Electoral Officer (DEO) of South 24 Parganas and East Medinipur, who are District Magistrates, to file FIRs against five officers working with EC- two Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), two Assistant Electoral Registration Officers and one data entry operator from the Baruipur East constituency in South 24 Parganas and the East Medinipur district's Moyna constituency, in connection with serious lapses and violating the policy of data security while sharing their login credentials of the ER database to unauthorised persons in August 2025.

West Bengal-CEO Manoj Kumar Agarwal has directed the concerned DEOs to ensure immediate “registration of FIRs against the aforesaid officials und Section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 along with relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sannita, 2023 and the information Technology Act, 2000, as applicable Failure to ensure the registration of these FIRs shall be treated with utmost seriousness.”

CEO has also asked to submit a compliance report regarding the registration of said FIRs to the Commission at the earliest.”


In August 2025, Election Commission of India (ECI) had directed West Bengal Chief Secretary Manoj Pant to suspend five persons, including a casual worker, and lodge FIRs against them-two Electoral Registration Office (ERO) and two Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AERO) for committing “grave lapses” and violating the policy of data security while sharing their login credentials of the ER database to unauthorised persons.

The EROs and AEROs from South 24 Parganas district’s Baruipur-- Debottam Dutta Choudhury, WBCS (Exe.), a 2012 batch officer and Deputy Project Director (Monitoring). District Rural Development Cell, South 24 Parganas and ERO of 137-Baruipur Purba Assembly Constituency Tathagata Mondal, Assistant Programme Officer, MGNREGS, Joynagar-1 Block and AERO of 137- Baruipur Purba AC; Biplab Sarkar, WBCS (Exe.), 2012 batch, and ERO of 206-????? ?ssembly Constituency and Sudipta Das, Panchayat Accounts & Audit Officer, Tamluk Block and AERO of 206-Moyna AC, were suspended and Pant was directed to lodge FIR against them. Among them, Dutta has already retired.

Logical Discrepancies
The total number of Logical discrepancies, which was 1.36 crore identified by ECI software, have been reduced to 94.49 lakh following scrutiny and ruling out minor mismatches over the last few days after publication of the draft list. Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has raised a major hue and cry on this issue and has asked CEC to publish a list.

Under the head Progeny > 6, which means, a single grandfather has been mapped by more than six grandchildren, 23 lakh discrepancies have been found, name mismatch is 51 lakh, Parent Age Difference <15 category is 4.74 lakh. In this category, errors are shown where the age difference between a father and son/ daughter is less than 15 years.

In another category, where elector and Parents Age Difference >50, the mismatch is around 8.41 lakh. In the category where Grandparent Age Difference <40, there are presently 3 lakh discrepancies.