West Bengal SIR Update: RTI Reveals Only 7 Lakh of 38 Lakh Appeals are Against Deletions

THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA has revealed a startling fact regarding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) tribunals in West Bengal. Of the approximately 38 lakh appeals, only seven lakh were related to the deletions from electoral rolls, while a major chunk of almost 31 lakh were appeals challenging inclusions to the list. Based on these appeals, the SIR appellate tribunals have so far disposed of 82,782 appeals, in which 75,443 names have been added back to the state’s electoral list

See Also: 1,468 Names Restored Before Phase 2 Voting in West Bengal Assembly Elections, 2026

This data has been obtained from the Chief electoral officer’s (CEO) office through a Right to Information (RTI) query filed by Congress Member of Parliament (MP) Isha Khan Choudhury, who represents the constituency of Dakshin Malda (South Malda) in Bengal. The response to the RTI was issued on August 17, 2026, and ran up to 28 pages detailing the progress of the SIR tribunals and their outcomes till date. 

The Post-SIR Legal-Administrative Mechanism 

The SIR process in West Bengal witnessed the deletion of approximately 91 lakh voters from the state’s electoral rolls ahead of the 2026 assembly elections. These individuals, thereby, could not cast their votes in the 2026 assembly elections. The subsequent process was to file an appeal before the designated tribunal in order to reconsider such deletions. Thus, after the assembly elections in April 2026, there was a period where people appealed to the tribunal for reconsidering the deletions in the final list. 

Based on an RTI filed by Congress MP Isha Khan Choudhury, a response was issued by the State’s CEO detailing the status of such tribunals. And it is this report that has become the subject of serious discussion and debates on the viability and feasibility of the revision process. 

According to the RTI reply, the Appellate Tribunal in West Bengal for this purpose received 38,10,620 appeals, of which 82,782 have been disposed of as of now. Of this disposed lot, 75,443 names have been added back to the state’s electoral list, which accounts for 91% of the total disposed cases.

However, there is another story that the RTI response reveals. According to a report by The Telegraph, of the total 38,10,620 appeals, 31 lakh applications were for challenging the inclusions to the list, while a mere seven lakh were against the deletions. Lawyer Gopal Sankarnarayanan—who is representing Congress Leader Prasenjit Bose’s petition to the Supreme Court—reportedly stated to the court that these appeals against inclusion were filed by the Election Commission and individual objectors. 

Geographical Distribution of Disposed Cases by the Tribunal

Based on this data from the RTI response, news outlet The Wire has highlighted a significant point. If 82,782 appeals have been disposed of, it accounts for just 2.17% of the total applications. This means that 37,27,838 appeals are still left to be analyzed and worked upon after almost four months of the assembly elections.

This is alarming because the status of one’s enfranchisement is deeply entangled with the normative ideas of citizenship, social belonging and welfare mechanisms of the state. After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government came to power in May 2026, accessibility of the welfare schemes such as that of the Annapurna Bhandar (Direct-Benefit Transfers) got linked to one’s status in the SIR 2026. Therefore, as has been flagged by a number of researchers and political commentators, a large section of the population is at risk of being erased from the social-welfare system of the state government. 

See Also: No Benefits for Women Delted During SIR Under Annapurna Bhandar: Bengal BJP

Additionally, it is also important to analyze the RTI response in light of Bengal’s geographical and demographic distribution. In the final SIR list, the highest number of deletions came from the two districts of Murshidabad and Malda. However, both these districts lie at the bottom of the total disposed cases.

According to the data provided by the Election Commission, the highest number of appeals were from the border district of Murshidabad in which of the total 7,47,305 appeals, only 434 names have been included and 53 have been excluded as of now. Similarly, in the border district of Malda, of the 5,31,149 appeals, 1,471 cases have been dealt by the tribunal, of which all are being included in the electoral rolls. 

Suggested Reading: