PIL in SC seeks detailed disclosure of West Bengal voter roll revisions

A PIL filed in the Supreme Court seeks detailed constituency-wise data on voter deletions and additions during West Bengal's Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The petition raises concerns over transparency, disenfranchisement and the possible impact of roll revisions on election outcomes

New Delhi: A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a detailed constituency-wise disclosure of disenfranchisement caused by the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal.

The PIL was filed by the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee’s SIR Committee chairperson Prasenjit Bose seeking directions to the Election Commission, the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal and the state government to make public the detailed data pertaining to the electoral roll revision exercise.

---

The plea by Bose filed through lawyer Neha Rathi came after the top court recently upheld the Election Commission’s power to conduct the SIR of electoral rolls and the modalities employed.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant upheld the Commission’s authority to conduct the SIR of electoral rolls and said that Aadhaar is not proof of citizenship.

The plea alleged that the revision of electoral rolls in the state just before the assembly elections, which saw a historic win for the Bharatiya Janata Party, had a significant impact on the outcome of these elections.

“An assembly constituency-wise analysis of the West Bengal assembly election results indicates that, out of the 207 seats secured by the BJP in 2026, the extent of alterations carried out under the SIR, including deletions and additions, exceeded the eventual margin of victory in 82 Assembly Constituencies,” the plea said.

It mentioned that out of these 82 constituencies, 70 were situated in 12 Muslim-concentrated districts. Notably, in 2021, the BJP had secured victory in only 9 of these constituencies.

“The data therefore suggests that the SIR-related alterations may have had a significant bearing on the electoral outcome in these 82 Assembly Constituencies,” it said.

The plea, which made the Election Commission, the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal and the state government as parties, sought a direction to them to disclose “the assembly constituency-wise number of Form 6 and Form 7 applications submitted, admitted and rejected during the claims and objection phase & subsequent phases during SIR and number of cases pending in each assembly constituency before the Appellate Tribunals.”

Notably, the BJP won 207 seats in the 294-member House, securing more than a two-thirds majority and ending the TMC’s 15-year rule in the state.

According to the petition, more than 58 lakh electors were excluded during the enumeration phase of the SIR exercise in West Bengal.

It mentioned that while 9.64 lakh applications for inclusion of names and 99,118 applications for deletion were received during the claims and objections phase, only 1.82 lakh additions were ultimately reflected in the final electoral roll published on February 28, 2026.

“The absence of such disclosure raises serious concerns regarding transparency, accountability and public scrutiny of the electoral roll revision process,” it said.

The plea also mentioned that the process adopted for adjudicating more than 60 lakh cases flagged for “logical discrepancies”, contending that criteria such as parent-child age gaps, multiple progeny linkages and name mismatches were not contemplated under the Representation of the People Act, led to large-scale deletions without adequate transparency.

Referring to the appellate mechanism created pursuant to Supreme Court orders, the petition said 19 appellate tribunals were constituted to hear challenges to additions and deletions from electoral rolls, but the standard operating procedure framed by a three-member judicial committee on April 7 was not made public.

The petition claimed that the absence of publicly available guidelines regarding the filing of appeals, conduct of hearings, issuance of notices and timelines for disposal created procedural uncertainty, particularly for poor and marginalised voters.

It referred to official data and media reports, indicating that only a small fraction of the nearly 25 lakh appeals filed before the tribunals had been disposed of by mid-May.

The petition cited data showing that out of 6,581 appeals disposed of till May 14, 4,043 were allowed. The petitioner has sought directions for the disclosure of assembly constituency-wise data on claims and objections, publication of the appellate tribunals’ SOP (standard operating procedure), preparation of simplified appeal guidelines in Bangla, Hindi and English, and permission for all electors deleted during different phases of the SIR process to approach the appellate tribunals for restoration of their names in the electoral rolls.

It is pertinent to note that data released by the ECI on April 7 mentioned that nearly 91 lakh voters were deleted from the electoral rolls in West Bengal following the Special Intensive Revision exercise in the state.

However, official data released on February 28 said 63.66 lakh names, around 8.3 per cent of the electorate, were deleted since the SIR process began in November last year, reducing the voter base from about 7.66 crore to just over 7.04 crore.