Before election commissioners flagged ‘centralisation’ of voter rolls, it was done in Bengal SIR
The issue of centralisation came up repeatedly in political debates and courtroom hearings during the roll revision process in Bengal.
Black News 
Vivek Joshi, one of India’s three election commissioners, raised an internal alarm in May about the “gradual centralisation” of voter lists, The Indian Express reported in its investigation about divisions within the top leadership of the Election Commission on Wednesday.
By then, however, the process of drawing up the electoral roll of West Bengal had already been centralised despite fervent opposition. In fact, the issue of centralisation came up repeatedly in political debates and courtroom hearings during the six-month-long special intensive revision of voter lists in the state.
Eventually, the names of over 91 lakh voters were deleted from Bengal’s rolls even though almost a third of them submitted documents and attended hearings to challenge their exclusion. The scale of deletions proved to be significant in shaping the results of the Assembly elections that took place in April, as Scroll has previously reported.
Neither the Election Commission nor the Supreme Court followed the principle of decentralisation, which is clearly established in the law that governs the drawing up of electoral rolls in India.
Section 13B of The Representation of the People Act of 1950 states that voter lists for every Assembly constituency “shall be prepared and revised by an electoral registration officer”. These officers are supposed to be local government officials...
