Missing in Election Commission affidavit: Break-up of Bengal SIR appeals for inclusion, exclusion of names - The Indian Express

The Election Commission of India has informed the Supreme Court that only 1.02 lakh of the 38.20 lakh appeals filed against the deletion and inclusion of electors in the West Bengal Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls have been disposed of so far, five months since the Supreme Court-ordered appellate tribunals began functioning.

The EC submitted a counter-affidavit Thursday in response to a July 17 notice on a petition by West Bengal Congress leader Prasenjit Bose who sought details of the pending appeals as well as additions and deletions to the rolls in the state.

But the EC counter-affidavit did not provide a break-up of how many appeals were filed by the 27.16 lakh deleted electors wanting to get back on the rolls or by the poll panel against inclusion of names.

On August 25, during a hearing on a clutch of petitions relating to the West Bengal SIR, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, one of the three judges on a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, had told Senior Advocate D S Naidu who appeared for the EC: “Get your data, the nature of the appeals that are filed, whether it is for inclusion or for exclusion. And then we will take a call as to whether we prioritise the exclusion and then inclusion because an inclusion is not affecting an individual right, but an exclusion is denuding a voting right. It will require some prioritisation. Nonetheless, it will bring down the burden (on the tribunals) to some extent.”

The EC counter-affidavit showed that 38,20,683 appeals had been filed, of which 1,02,231 had been disposed of while 37,18,452 were pending.

The EC data showed that from December 17, 2025, when the SIR draft roll was published, until August 7, a total of 34.13 lakh Form 6, the statutory form for voter registration, were filled. This would include those applying for forms for the first time as well as those from the 58.20 lakh electors deleted in the draft stage of the SIR.

Of those, 4.86 lakh forms were unprocessed, 7.26 lakh forms for enrolment were rejected and 14,079 accepted. At the same time, the EC data showed, a total of 6.39 lakh Form 7, the form for deletion, were filled, of which 14,506 were rejected and 3,355 were accepted.

The data showed that the gender ratio of the electoral roll – the number of female voters to 1,000 male voters – was 969 as on January 1, 2025 and had increased to 970 as on October 27, 2025, the day the SIR was announced in the state. The gender ratio fell during the SIR, reaching 956 in the draft electoral roll as on December 16, 2025, and recovering slightly to 964 in the final SIR roll published on February 28.

The data also showed that with a projected population of 10.40 crore as on January 1, there were 6.44 crore electors, meaning that the electors to population ratio (EP ratio) was 0.62, or 62 electors per 100 population.

The EP ratio is a measure of the health of the electoral roll. The number of voters should be close to the population above 18 years. During the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the EP ratio for the country was 66.76 (electors per 100 population).

The SIR of electoral rolls was underway in nine states and three Union Territories from October 2025 when the Supreme Court, noting the trust deficit between the EC and the then TMC government in West Bengal, took the unprecedented step on February 20 of ordering adjudication of eligibility of electors in the state by judicial officers.

Around 700 such judicial officers decided on the eligibility of 60.06 electors who were marked “under adjudication” by the EC, ordering deletion of 27.16 lakh names and inclusion of 32.9 lakh. On March 10, the Supreme Court ordered the establishment of an appellate mechanism to give those aggrieved by the orders of the judicial officers a chance to appeal.

On March 20, the EC notified 19 appellate tribunals, each comprising a single retired High Court judge. The tribunals began functioning on April 13.

Damini Nath is an Assistant Editor with the national bureau of The Indian Express. She covers the ho... Read More