The Election Commission has asked the Supreme Court to raise West Bengal’s SIR appellate tribunals from 19 to 42. It said the move is needed to clear over 37 lakh pending appeals and strengthen the review process.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has told the Supreme Court that the number of appellate tribunals dealing with appeals arising from West Bengal’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls should be increased from 19 to 42 to speed up the disposal of a massive backlog of cases.
In an affidavit filed before the top court, the poll body said one tribunal should be created for each of West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha constituencies, arguing that the existing mechanism is struggling to handle the volume of appeals generated by the revision exercise.
According to the ECI, around 38.3 lakh appeals have been filed before SIR-related tribunals so far, but only 1,26,194 cases have been decided. More than 37 lakh appeals remain pending.
The Commission said the appeals are not limited to voters whose names were removed from the electoral rolls. Of the total appeals, over 22.2 lakh were filed by individuals seeking restoration of names deleted during the revision process, while around 16.1 lakh appeals challenge the inclusion of names in the voter list.
The ECI argued that portraying all appeals as cases of wrongful deletion presents an incomplete picture. It noted that objections to fresh inclusions form a substantial portion of the litigation arising from the SIR exercise.
The affidavit states that tribunals have so far ordered the restoration of 1,13,943 names to the electoral rolls. Of the appeals decided, more than 90 per cent resulted in names being added back, while 8,649 appeals were rejected.
Defending the revision process, the Commission rejected claims that large-scale deletions automatically indicate disenfranchisement of genuine voters. It said the exercise also identified entries classified as “Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate” and that deletion figures cannot be viewed in isolation.
The ECI also disputed allegations that the SIR process affected the outcome of the West Bengal Assembly elections. Petitioners had argued that in several constituencies the margin of victory was lower than the number of voters deleted from the rolls.