New Delhi: Barely 2 per cent of the nearly 38 lakh appeals filed by voters excluded from West Bengal’s electoral rolls after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) had been decided as of August 7, with the vast majority still pending before appellate tribunals, according to data placed before the Supreme Court this week.
Of the 82,782 appeals disposed of, 75,443 resulted in the voter being added back to the rolls, while 7,339 ended in exclusion, meaning over 91 per cent of the decisions so far have gone in favour of the voter, the Bar and Bench reported, citing a Right to Information (RTI) response from the office of West Bengal’s Chief Electoral Officer.
That leaves 37,27,838 appeals – or nearly 98 per cent of the total – still awaiting a hearing, roughly one decided for every 46 filed.
SC seeks full picture on pending appeals
The figures came up on Tuesday, August 25, before a bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, which was hearing a plea on the functioning of the SIR appellate tribunals.
The bench directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to file a detailed reply breaking down the pending appeals, including how many had come from voters seeking inclusion or exclusion and how many involved objectors or the Commission itself challenging inclusions, news agency PTI has separately reported.
The RTI response, obtained by Congress MP Isha Khan Choudhury and placed on record before the court in an application by Congress leader Prasenjit Bose, also lays out how sharply the SIR exercise reshaped the size of the state’s electorate.
Rolls shrank by over 1.15 crore voters
West Bengal’s electoral roll stood at 7,60,10,006 names in 2024. By the time the final SIR roll was published on February 28 this year, that number had fallen to 6,44,52,609, a drop of 1,15,57,397 voters, or just over 15 per cent.
The decline cut across gender lines in similar proportion. Male electors fell by 58,02,457, or roughly 15 per cent, while female electors dropped by 57,54,317, a marginally steeper 15.39 per cent. Third-gender electors saw the sharpest proportional fall of all, down from 1,773 to 1,150, a reduction of over 35 per cent.
The impact, however, was far from even across the state. Kolkata South and Maldah recorded the steepest drops, both shedding more than 30 per cent of their 2024 electorate, Kolkata South falling from 9,00,052 to 6,09,442 voters and Maldah from 31,59,130 to 21,58,076.
Kolkata North and Uttar Dinajpur weren’t far behind, losing over a quarter of their rolls each, while Murshidabad and Paschim Bardhaman recorded reductions of 23.29 per cent and 18.62 per cent, respectively.
At the other end, Purba Medinipur saw the smallest proportional dip, at under 4 per cent, with Bankura and Paschim Medinipur also among the least affected. In sheer numbers, North 24 Parganas lost the most voters overall, at 14,44,123, ahead of Murshidabad and South 24 Parganas.
Most appeals came from EC, not voters
According to Bose’s application, the SIR process led to the deletion of more than 90.8 lakh electors in total, of whom 27.16 lakh names were struck off only after formal adjudication. Yet, just about 7 lakh of those 27 lakh adjudicated deletions were actually contested by the voters concerned.
The bulk of the roughly 38 lakh appeals pending before the 19 tribunals set up on the Supreme Court’s directions in March were instead filed by the Election Commission itself, contesting inclusions cleared by adjudicating officers or by other objectors challenging specific voters’ names, rather than by excluded voters seeking to get back on the rolls.
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