About 36.6 lakh cases remain before 19 tribunals in the West Bengal Special Intensive Revision, with excluded voters facing denial of state welfare benefits

Why in the News

Around 36.6 lakh cases were still to clear the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal at the last count in June, with 19 tribunals scrutinising applications for “logical discrepancies”. Those already marked excluded have received no reasons, no written orders and no statement of what exclusion means for their entitlements, so a roll revision has become a determination of status without the safeguards that a determination of status requires.

What is the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls?

1. About: It is a house to house re verification of the entire electoral roll, in which every existing elector must establish eligibility afresh rather than the roll being presumed correct.
2. Legal basis: Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 empowers the Election Commission of India to direct a special revision of the roll of any constituency at any time, for reasons to be recorded in writing.
3. How it differs from a summary revision: A summary revision only adds, deletes or corrects entries on application, and leaves the existing roll intact as the base.
4. Role of the base year roll: The roll from the last intensive revision is treated as conclusive proof of eligibility, and in West Bengal that base is the 2002 roll.
5. Process flow: The elector files an enumeration form with the Booth Level Officer, then faces claims and objections, then a hearing before the Electoral Registration Officer, then adjudication, and finally an appeal to a tribunal.

What is a Booth Level Officer?

1. About: A Booth Level Officer (BLO) is a local government employee appointed by the Electoral Registration Officer as the field level link between the elector and the electoral registration machinery for a single polling booth.
2. Function: The BLO distributes and collects enumeration forms, verifies residence, and forwards claims and objections upward, but holds no power to decide inclusion or deletion.

What is the appellate stage in an electoral roll dispute?

1. About: Sections 24 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 provide for an appeal against an order of the Electoral Registration Officer on inclusion, deletion or correction of a name, to a designated appellate authority.
2. What it requires: An appellate order must record reasons, since the reasons are what an aggrieved elector needs to frame a further challenge before a High Court.

What is the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019?

1. About: It provides an accelerated path to Indian citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who entered India on or before 31 December 2014.
2. Why it appears here: The West Bengal government has stated that persons who have applied under this Act will be exempted from the withdrawal of state welfare benefits on deletion from the roll.

What does the pendency before the tribunals show about the scale of the exercise?

1. Volume of unresolved cases: Around 36.6 lakh cases were awaiting clearance at the last count, which was in June.
2. The adjudicating machinery: 19 tribunals are scrutinising these applications, which is the final hurdle in the process.
3. The test being applied: The tribunals are examining applications for “logical discrepancies”, a standard nowhere defined in the published process.
4. The disposal figure is opaque: The Election Commission has said the tribunals disposed of 38,000 cases till June, with no clarity on how many of those were of persons deleted from the roll.
5. Judicial pressure for disclosure: The Supreme Court has nudged the Election Commission to divulge the figures, with the next hearing listed for 25 August.
6. The information gap: The Commission has stayed tightlipped on the details of an exercise without precedent in the State.

Why do those already excluded not know what follows exclusion?

1. Five possible outcomes, none confirmed: Those deleted have been left uncertain between detention, deportation, denial of government benefits, a long court case, or reapplication from the start.
2. The State government’s position: The State government has publicly raised all of these as possibilities without settling on any.
3. The Election Commission’s position: The Commission says reapplication, starting again as a “new voter”, is an option available to the excluded.
4. The welfare decision: In its first Cabinet meeting the State government decided that persons deleted in the SIR will not be able to avail State welfare schemes.
5. The stated exceptions: Exceptions were announced for those whose applications are pending before tribunals and for those who have applied under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019.
6. What repetition has done: Ministers have repeated the warning since, so the linkage between the roll and rations is now an operating expectation rather than a rule.

What do the individual cases reveal about how the tribunals operate?

1. Deletion without notice: A Bolpur family learnt in May that the tribunal had ruled against a 72 year old man and his 42 year old daughter, and they received no notice of the order.
2. No reasons and no written orders: Counsel for an excluded elector in Hooghly states that the tribunals assign no reasons and issue no written order on the basis of which a court can be approached.
3. The 2002 roll decides everything: One Bolpur elector’s name was excluded because he had worked in Kolkata and was therefore absent from the 2002 roll, which the Commission treats as conclusive proof.
4. Documents did not settle the case: The same family produced secondary and higher secondary board certificates at the hearing, and the cases still went to the tribunal and ended in deletion.
5. Errors in the notices themselves: A 31 year old woman in Arambagh was served a notice stating she had seven siblings when she has four, and all four cleared the revision while she was dropped.
6. Families split across the roll: A 48 year old Hooghly construction worker’s mother, brother and wife are on the roll while he was dropped without ever being asked for documents.
7. No acknowledgment of appeals: A 50 year old garland maker in a Kolkata slum filed her appeal offline and never received even an acknowledgment from the tribunal, while the Commission’s website shows her as excluded.
8. Scale within a single booth: One Booth Level Officer reported that 105 of the 1,017 voters in his booth were deleted, adding that in his personal opinion they may be genuine voters and that no reason was shown.
9. The field machinery cannot explain it: Booth Level Officers in the affected wards say only that the office and the tribunal judges will decide.

Why does exclusion from the roll now reach beyond the vote?

1. Rations are the immediate fear: Excluded electors report that they continue to receive rations and expect them to stop, having heard ministers say the deleted will lose access to schemes.
2. Pensions are equally exposed: A widow receiving a State widow pension alongside rations reports the same fear, on an income of Rs 200 a day from selling flower garlands.
3. Ordinary financial transactions are in doubt: Excluded electors are unsure whether they can complete formalities for bank accounts or an LPG connection without a name on the roll.
4. The franchise has already been lost: A Bolpur father and daughter could not vote in the 2026 elections because of their SIR status, before any tribunal had finally ruled.
5. Social standing is affected: Those deleted fear how neighbours will treat them once exclusion becomes known, since the label carries an implication of foreign origin.
6. Citizenship is being inferred from a roll: An electoral roll records eligibility to vote, not nationality, yet deportation and detention are being discussed as consequences of deletion.

Why is the judicial remedy not a real remedy for those excluded?

1. The High Court can only send it back: On 4 August the Calcutta High Court directed the tribunal to consider and dispose of one appellant’s appeal afresh, preferably within three months, which restarts rather than resolves the case.
2. Related cases move separately: In the same family, the daughter’s petition was still awaiting a hearing when the father’s was remanded.
3. Delay compounds: A petition moved on 28 July by another excluded elector was still awaiting a hearing weeks later.
4. Only individuals may appeal: Assistance organisations were told that the individual, not a representative body, must approach the High Court, which rules out a collective petition.
5. Cost is prohibitive: Excluded electors state plainly that they do not have the money to go to court on daily wage incomes.
6. Appeals disappear before they are heard: An assistance organisation working in Kolkata slums filed 54 offline appeals to tribunals on 10 April and received no acknowledgment receipt for 17 of them.
7. Absence of reasons blocks the appeal itself: Without a reasoned order stating why a name was deleted, an appellant has nothing to challenge.

Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

1. Reversal of the burden of proof: The exercise requires a long standing elector to prove eligibility rather than requiring the State to prove ineligibility. e.g. electors in Bolpur who voted in successive elections were required to produce board certificates to retain a name already on the roll.
2. Documentary thresholds that exclude the poor: Linking eligibility to a 2002 roll entry disadvantages migrants, women married across districts and the landless. e.g. a Kolkata slum resident whose late husband migrated from Bihar could not link herself to the 2002 roll while her son linked himself to an uncle and cleared.
3. Absence of reasoned orders in the appellate chain: Adjudication without written reasons defeats the right to appeal. e.g. an Arambagh elector’s counsel records that no reason was given for deletion and no written order was issued.
4. Administrative errors carried into final orders: Verification data is entered without cross checking against the household record. e.g. a notice recorded seven siblings for an elector who has four, and the error was never corrected before deletion.
5. Linkage of the roll to welfare entitlements: Making ration, pension and scheme access contingent on roll status converts an electoral process into a subsistence question. e.g. the State Cabinet decided that persons deleted in the revision would not be able to avail State welfare schemes.
6. Conflation of electoral registration with citizenship: Deletion is being treated as evidence of foreign nationality without any determination under citizenship law. e.g. detention and deportation have been publicly discussed as consequences of deletion from the roll.
7. Capacity of the field machinery: A single Booth Level Officer handles over a thousand electors alongside a regular government job and cannot explain the outcomes. e.g. one BLO recorded 105 deletions among 1,017 electors and said he did not know the reasons.
8. Opacity of published data: Aggregate figures are released without the breakdown needed to audit the process. e.g. the Commission’s figure of 38,000 disposed cases does not disclose how many concerned deletions.

Conclusion

The revision has not ended with the publication of the roll. The tribunals decide exclusion without reasons and without written orders, so the excluded cannot frame an appeal, while the State government has linked deletion to the loss of welfare benefits and public discussion has extended it to detention and deportation. A correction of the electoral roll has therefore become a determination of legal status carried out without the procedural protections that such a determination requires. Until the Election Commission discloses the tribunal outcomes and the consequences of exclusion are fixed in law rather than in political statements, the 36.6 lakh pending cases remain a question of livelihood as much as of the franchise.

Electoral Roll Management in India

1. About: The electoral roll is the constituency wise register of persons qualified to vote, prepared and revised under the superintendence of the Election Commission of India.
2. Scale: India’s electorate crossed 97 crore at the 2024 general election, spread across more than 10.5 lakh polling stations, which makes the roll the largest voter register in the world.
3. Qualifying date: A person must have attained 18 years on the qualifying date, and since the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 there are four qualifying dates each year, on 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October.
4. Field machinery: The chain runs from the Chief Electoral Officer of the State, to the District Election Officer, the Electoral Registration Officer, the Assistant Electoral Registration Officer and the Booth Level Officer, with Booth Level Agents appointed by political parties.
5. Types of revision: Revision may be intensive, summary, or partly intensive and partly summary, and the Commission may additionally order a special revision at any time.
6. Forms used: Form 6 for inclusion, Form 6A for overseas electors, Form 6B for voluntary Aadhaar linkage, Form 7 for objection to inclusion or for deletion, and Form 8 for correction, shifting or replacement.
7. Publication cycle: A draft roll is published, claims and objections are invited for a fixed period, and the final roll is published after disposal.

Constitutional Framework Governing Electoral Rolls

1. Article 324: Vests the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls in the Election Commission of India.
2. Article 325: Provides for one general electoral roll for every constituency and bars exclusion on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex.
3. Article 326: Establishes adult suffrage, entitling every citizen aged 18 or above to registration unless disqualified for non residence, unsoundness of mind, crime, or corrupt or illegal practice.
4. Article 327: Empowers Parliament to make law on all matters relating to elections, including the preparation of electoral rolls.
5. Article 328: Gives a State legislature power to legislate on State election matters not covered by parliamentary law.
6. Article 329(b): Bars court interference in elections except through an election petition presented in the manner provided by law.
7. Article 11: Vests exclusively in Parliament the power to regulate the acquisition and termination of citizenship, so citizenship cannot be determined by an electoral registration authority.

Laws and Rules Governing Electoral Rolls

1. Representation of the People Act, 1950: Governs the preparation and revision of electoral rolls and the qualifications for registration.
2. Section 16: Disqualifies a person from registration if they are not a citizen of India, or are of unsound mind as declared by a competent court, or are disqualified under a law relating to corrupt practices.
3. Section 19: Requires that a person be at least 18 years old on the qualifying date and be ordinarily resident in the constituency.
4. Section 20: Defines ordinary residence, and clarifies that mere ownership of property does not create residence.
5. Section 21: Provides for preparation and revision of rolls, with sub section 3 empowering a special revision for reasons recorded in writing.
6. Sections 22 and 23: Provide for correction of entries and inclusion of names in a roll already published.
7. Section 24: Provides an appeal against an order of the Electoral Registration Officer to the designated appellate authority.
8. Section 31: Penalises a false declaration made in connection with the preparation of a roll.
9. Registration of Electors Rules, 1960: Prescribe the forms, the manner of publication of the draft roll, the notice and hearing procedure for claims and objections, and the publication of the final roll.
10. Representation of the People Act, 1951: Governs the conduct of elections, qualifications and disqualifications of candidates, corrupt practices and election petitions.
11. Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021: Introduced voluntary Aadhaar linkage of electoral roll data and added three additional qualifying dates each year.
12. Citizenship Act, 1955 and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019: Govern the acquisition and determination of citizenship, which is a separate statutory process from electoral registration.
13. Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023: Governs the appointment, service conditions and tenure of the Election Commissioners.

Back2Basics: Election Commission of India

1. Constitutional status: A permanent constitutional body established under Article 324, which came into existence on 25 January 1950.
2. Composition: It functioned as a single member body until 1989, and has been a three member body comprising the Chief Election Commissioner and two Election Commissioners continuously since 1993.
3. Appointment: Under the 2023 Act, the President appoints them on the recommendation of a committee comprising the Prime Minister, a Union Cabinet Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
4. Tenure: Six years or until the age of 65, whichever is earlier.
5. Removal: The Chief Election Commissioner can be removed only in the same manner and on the same grounds as a judge of the Supreme Court, and an Election Commissioner only on the recommendation of the Chief Election Commissioner.
6. Mandate: It conducts elections to Parliament, the State legislatures and the offices of the President and Vice President, and prepares and revises the electoral rolls for them.
7. Limits of its jurisdiction: Panchayat and municipal elections are conducted by State Election Commissions under Articles 243K and 243ZA, not by the Election Commission of India.
8. Headquarters: New Delhi, with a Chief Electoral Officer in every State and Union Territory.

Government and Election Commission Initiatives

1. ECINET: A unified digital platform consolidating the Commission’s separate voter and election applications into a single interface for electors, candidates and officials.
2. Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP), 2009: The Commission’s flagship voter education and registration outreach programme, targeted at young, urban and low turnout groups.
3. Electoral Literacy Clubs: Institutional clubs in schools, colleges and communities to build electoral awareness among future and new electors, now expanded in a second version.
4. National Voters’ Service Portal and Voter Helpline application: Provide online filing of Forms 6, 7 and 8, roll search and status tracking without a visit to the Electoral Registration Officer.
5. cVIGIL application: Allows any citizen to report a Model Code of Conduct violation with a geotagged photograph or video, with a hundred minute response commitment.
6. Form 6B Aadhaar linkage: Permits voluntary submission of the Aadhaar number under the Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021 to remove duplicate entries.
7. Remote voting machine prototype: A multi constituency electronic voting machine demonstrated to political parties to enable domestic migrants to vote from their place of work.

Key Facts about Elections and Electoral Rolls

1. National Voters’ Day is observed on 25 January, marking the foundation of the Election Commission of India in 1950, and was first observed in 2011.
2. India’s electorate has grown from about 17.3 crore at the first general election to about 97 crore in 2024.
3. The voting age was lowered from 21 years to 18 years by the 61st Constitutional Amendment Act, 1988.
4. The None of the Above option was introduced on electronic voting machines after the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties case.
5. Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 bars a person confined in prison from voting, though the right to be registered on the roll continues.
6. The last intensive revision in West Bengal was in 2002, which is why that roll serves as the base for the current exercise.
7. An election petition challenging an election lies only before the High Court, under Article 329(b) read with the Representation of the People Act, 1951.

Challenges in Electoral Roll Management

1. Duplicate and multiple entries: Internal migration produces the same elector on two rolls. e.g. seasonal construction and agricultural migrants are commonly registered both in their home district and at their work destination.
2. Deletion without notice or hearing: Names are removed without the elector being informed, defeating the statutory right to be heard. e.g. electors in West Bengal report learning of deletion only from the Commission’s website months after the order.
3. Documentary burden on the poorest: Proof of ancestry and continuous residence is hardest for those who most need welfare entitlements. e.g. slum residents whose parents were never on an earlier intensive revision roll cannot establish the required link.
4. Conflation of roll status with citizenship: An administrative deletion is treated in public discourse as a finding of foreign nationality. e.g. the 2019 Assam National Register of Citizens excluded about 19 lakh people whose status remained unresolved for years afterwards.
5. Field level capacity constraints: A Booth Level Officer covers over a thousand electors while performing a full time government job. e.g. teachers and anganwadi workers deployed as Booth Level Officers carry the verification of an entire polling area alone.
6. Aadhaar linkage and wrongful deletion risk: Automated matching against another database produces false deletions. e.g. the 2015 National Electoral Roll Purification programme in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh removed large numbers of names before Aadhaar seeding was halted.
7. Weak appellate quality: Appellate authorities decide without recording reasons, which removes the basis for judicial review. e.g. tribunal orders in the current revision are reported to carry neither reasons nor a written order.
8. Data opacity: Aggregate disposal figures are published without a breakdown by outcome. e.g. a figure of cases disposed conveys nothing about how many electors were deleted and on what ground.

Way Forward

1. Mandate reasoned written orders at every stage: Require every adjudicating and appellate authority to issue a speaking order stating the ground of deletion and to serve it on the elector.
2. Guarantee acknowledgment and tracking: Issue a machine generated receipt for every claim, objection and appeal, with an online status tracker, so no appeal can disappear.
3. Fix statutory timelines: Prescribe an outer limit for disposal of appeals, since indefinite pendency is itself a denial of the franchise.
4. Delink the electoral roll from welfare entitlements: State expressly that ration, pension and scheme access do not depend on the roll, since entitlement statutes and the roll rest on different criteria.
5. Provide free legal aid at the tribunal stage: Route District Legal Services Authority assistance to appellants automatically, since individual appeals are otherwise unaffordable.
6. Publish disaggregated data: Release constituency wise and booth wise figures for deletions, grounds and appeal outcomes so that the exercise can be independently audited.
7. Strengthen and supervise the field machinery: Cap the number of electors per Booth Level Officer, provide dedicated deputation rather than additional charge, and audit a random sample of verifications.
8. Separate citizenship determination from electoral registration: Confirm that a question of nationality can only be decided under the Citizenship Act, 1955 by the competent authority, and never by an electoral registration order.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2017, GS2, 15 marks] To enhance the quality of democracy in India the Election Commission of India has proposed electoral reforms in 2016. What are the suggested reforms and how far are they significant to make democracy successful?”