Election Commission’s appeals against 16.10 lakh cleared voters raise legal questions

A little over 16 lakh electors in West Bengal whose names had been cleared by judicial officers after being flagged for logical discrepancies during the West Bengal SIR had found themselves back in the crosshairs when the Election Commission of India (ECI) filed appeals against the inclusion of their names.

These electors would have voted in the Assembly polls in April because their names appeared on the supplementary lists published before the elections.

But the officials who filed appeals against the inclusion of the 16.10 lakh voters may not have had the authority to do so under the Representation of the People Act.

According to the Act, the CEO/DEO/ERO/AERO are the authorities with respect to electoral rolls.

In its affidavit filed before the Supreme Court on October 26, the Election Commission of India said that the appeals were not brought to its notice earlier and that a communication dated October 22, 2026, was received from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal, stating that its officials had filed the appeals in their capacity as authorities under the Act. It further said that the “officers had the authority to file the appeals as per the orders of this Hon’ble (Supreme) Court”.

Though the ECI, in the affidavit, mentioned that the only authorities vis-à-vis electoral rolls recognised under the Act are the “CEO/DEOs/EROs/AEROs”, it did not state categorically that the appeals against inclusions were filed by these authorised officials, and mentioned them as “officers of the office of CEO West Bengal”.

The filing of appeals against voters cleared by judicial officers was one of the questions raised by Election Commissioners S. S. Sandhu and Vivek Joshi in their file notings. Opposition parties in West Bengal have called for the scrapping of these appeals and sought a judicial probe into the matter.

According to Congress leader Prasenjit Bose, one of the petitioners in the West Bengal SIR case in the top court, these “officers of the office of the CEO” who have filed appeals against inclusion in the Appellate Tribunals cannot have any authority under the Act since the Tribunals were created by the Supreme Court in April 2026 and the Act says nothing about any tribunal.

On Thursday (October 29, 2026), the Congress, in a memorandum submitted to the CEO of West Bengal, demanded that the appeals against inclusion filed by the ECI be cancelled, as they violated the Act. It demanded an IT audit to disclose the date, time and process of filing these appeals.

The Appellate Tribunals were formed during the Supreme Court’s supervision of the SIR. Judicial officers, drawn from a list the Calcutta High Court sent at the Supreme Court’s direction, are adjudicating roughly 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases. On March 10, the Apex Court had directed that a separate appellate body be set up so that people could challenge those officers’ decisions.

Out of the roughly 60 lakh “doubtful” cases, the 700 judicial officers cleared and restored 32,77,360 voters to the electoral rolls. The remaining 27.23 lakh were rejected, of which 22 lakh appealed to the tribunals.

The Election Commission constituted the Appellate Tribunals for West Bengal on March 21. These began functioning around April 13, and on April 16, the Supreme Court ordered that voters whose appeals succeeded be added through a supplementary list. This came days before Assembly elections began on April 23, and reportedly only 136 names had been cleared by then.

Parallelly, 16,10,311 bulk appeals were instituted at the appellate tribunals challenging the decision to include voters restored by judicial officers, bringing the total number of cases pending in them to a little more than 38 lakh.

West Bengal recorded a historic voter turnout of 92.47% in the two-phase Assembly election, the highest in the State since Independence.