Missing in EC affidavit on SIR in Bengal: Break-up of appeals for name inclusion

Why in the News

The Election Commission of India (EC) has told the Supreme Court that only 1,02,231 of the 38,20,683 appeals filed against deletions and inclusions in the West Bengal Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls have been disposed of, leaving 37,18,452 pending five months after the Court ordered appellate tribunals began working. The affidavit did not carry the one thing the Court had asked for, a break up of the appeals by ground, meaning how many were filed by the 27.16 lakh deleted electors seeking to get back on the rolls and how many were filed by the poll panel against inclusion of names. That break up is not a formality. A Bench hearing the West Bengal petitions had said in August that an exclusion denudes a voting right while an inclusion does not affect an individual right, so the two categories should be prioritised differently and the tribunals’ burden reduced accordingly. Without the break up, the Court cannot order that prioritisation, and the pending stock stays undifferentiated.

What is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls?

1. About: An intensive revision rebuilds the electoral roll by requiring electors to establish eligibility afresh, rather than only adding and deleting names against the existing roll.
2. How a name moves: Enrolment is sought through Form 6, the statutory form for voter registration, and deletion is sought through Form 7.
3. Scale of the current exercise: The revision was under way in nine States and three Union Territories from October 2025.
4. What makes West Bengal different: Noting the trust deficit between the Commission and the then State government, the Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of ordering that the eligibility of electors in the State be adjudicated by judicial officers rather than by electoral registration machinery alone.

How was the West Bengal appellate mechanism built?

1. Judicial adjudication first: Around 700 judicial officers decided the eligibility of the 60.06 lakh electors the Commission had marked “under adjudication”.
2. The outcome of that adjudication: The officers ordered the deletion of 27.16 lakh names and the inclusion of 32.9 lakh.
3. An appeal layer was then ordered: The Supreme Court directed on 10 March that an appellate mechanism be set up so that anyone aggrieved by a judicial officer’s order had a route to challenge it.
4. The tribunals themselves: The Commission notified 19 appellate tribunals on 20 March, each consisting of a single retired High Court judge, and they began functioning on 13 April.

What do the appeal numbers show?

1. The stock is close to untouched: Disposal stands at a fraction of the appeals filed, and the overwhelming majority remain pending after five months of working tribunals.
2. Capacity against volume: Nineteen tribunals, each a single judge, carry the entire appellate load of a State wide revision.
3. The proceeding that produced the figures: The Commission filed the counter affidavit in answer to a July notice on a petition by a West Bengal Congress leader seeking details of pending appeals and of additions and deletions to the rolls.

Why does the missing break up matter to the Court?

1. The two categories are not equivalent: An exclusion takes away an existing voting right, while an inclusion does not take away anything from an individual, which is why the Court wanted them separated.
2. Prioritisation is the practical remedy the Court was examining: Separating the categories would let exclusion appeals be heard first and would bring down the tribunals’ burden to some extent.
3. The Commission was asked directly: The Bench told counsel for the Commission in August to get the data on the nature of the appeals filed, whether for inclusion or for exclusion, before it took a call.
4. What the affidavit supplied instead: The affidavit gave totals filed, disposed of and pending, with no split by ground of appeal.

What does the rest of the Commission’s data say about the roll?

1. Enrolment applications: From the publication of the SIR draft roll on 17 December 2025 until 7 August, 34.13 lakh Form 6 applications were filed, covering both first time applicants and those among the 58.20 lakh electors deleted at the draft stage.
2. Disposal of those applications: 4.86 lakh forms were unprocessed, 7.26 lakh enrolment forms were rejected and 14,079 were accepted.
3. Deletion applications: 6.39 lakh Form 7 applications were filed, of which 14,506 were rejected and 3,355 were accepted.

What do the gender ratio and the elector population ratio indicate?

1. Gender ratio before the revision: The number of female electors per 1,000 male electors stood at 969 on 1 January 2025 and rose to 970 by 27 October 2025, the day the revision was announced in the State.
2. Gender ratio during the revision: The ratio fell to 956 in the draft roll of 16 December 2025, and recovered only partly to 964 in the final SIR roll published on 28 February.
3. Elector population ratio, and what it measures: The elector population ratio (EP ratio) is the number of electors per 100 people, and it is used as a check on the health of a roll, since the elector count should sit close to the population above 18 years.
4. Where West Bengal now stands: Against a projected population of 10.40 crore, the State has 6.44 crore electors, giving an EP ratio of 62 electors per 100 population, below the 66.76 recorded for the country at the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Challenges to the SIR appellate process

1. Capacity was fixed before the volume was known: The number of tribunals was notified in March, before the scale of appeals emerged, and it has not moved since. Eg. Each tribunal is a single retired High Court judge covering several districts of the State.
   The Fix: Tie the number of tribunals to the district wise stock of pending appeals, with a per tribunal monthly disposal norm reviewed each quarter.
2. The burden of proof sits on the deleted elector: The appellate route opens only after a judicial officer has already ruled against the person, so the elector must produce documents the revision itself found insufficient. Eg. The statutory route back on to the roll is a fresh Form 6, and rejections of such forms in the State run into lakhs.
   The Fix: Allow a tribunal to call for the electoral registration record of the previous roll on its own motion, so an old entry is evidence the elector does not have to reproduce.
3. An appeal decided after a poll restores nothing: A vote missed because a name was wrongly deleted cannot be returned by a later favourable order. Eg. Bypolls in the State are due on 6 October while the pending stock runs into tens of lakhs.
   The Fix: Require appeals from any constituency going to poll to be decided before the last date for nominations in that constituency.

Conclusion

The appellate mechanism was created to give a wrongly deleted elector a way back, and its output so far is a small fraction of its intake. The Court’s proposed remedy was not more tribunals but a triage that puts exclusions first, and that remedy is blocked by the absence of a single dataset the Commission has not filed. Until the break up by ground of appeal is placed on record, the Court cannot order prioritisation and the pending stock stays undifferentiated. The next hearing, and whether the Commission files that break up before it, is the point to watch.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2017, GS2, 15] 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?”