For the first time, the Election Commission has informed the Supreme Court that of the 38 lakh appeals filed against inclusions and exclusions from the West Bengal electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision, over 22 lakh appeals were filed by voters who had been deleted, which means that 82% of the 27.16 lakh voters deleted through an unprecedented adjudication process in the state have appealed their exclusion.

In a reply to an application by petitioner and TMC MP Derek O’ Brien, the EC told the court on Friday that of the total 38.31 lakh appeals pending before the appellate tribunals, 22.21 lakh were filed by deleted voters seeking inclusion, while 16.10 lakh were filed against voters included, which means these appeals are seeking further deletion. The EC did not specify who these appeals were filed by, but any elector or electoral official can file the form seeking deletion of someone suspected to be ineligible.

The EC reply also suggested increasing the number of tribunals for the purpose of SIR appeals. “That with a view to further streamline and expedite the disposal of the pending appeals, it is proposed that the number of Appellate Tribunals in the State of West Bengal may be considered for increase to correspond with the number of Parliamentary Constituencies in the State, so as to facilitate expeditious disposal of the pending appeals,” it said.

In an unprecedented step, the Supreme Court on February 20 ordered the adjudication of the eligibility of some electors of West Bengal by judicial officers, noting that there was a trust deficit between the then-TMC government and the EC. Around 700 judicial officers from West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha were tasked with determining the eligibility of 60.06 lakh electors flagged by the EC’s “logical discrepancies” algorithm. Of these, the judicial officers ordered the deleted of 27.16 lakh names, while retaining the rest. The Supreme Court then on March 10 ordered the setting up of appellate tribunals to hear appeals against the decisions of the judicial officers. Nineteen such tribunals were set up and began functioning on April 13, just days before polling in the West Bengal Assembly polls on April 23 and April 29. Of the lakhs of appeals filed, the tribunals had added back just 1,607 electors in time for polling, with the remaining unable to cast their votes in the 2026 polls.