The Supreme Court on Friday orally observed that a 75-year-old advocate who was excluded from the final voter list in West Bengal after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls appeared to be entitled for inclusion in the list. .A Bench consisting of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justice V Mohana was hearing a plea challenging such exclusion by the Murshidabad-based lawyer, who has been practising for nearly 50 years.He informed the Court that although he had filed an appeal before the appellate tribunal, his appeal was yet to be decided.The Court ultimately left it to the appellate tribunal to give a final decision in the matter. However, given the delays reported in the disposal of appeals before the tribunal, the Court also directed that the decision on the lawyer's plea be expedited. “We are of the prima facie view that he is entitled to be included in SIR. But see the mechanism created by us. I got a call from the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court that, let the time to decide appeals be extended as there are a lot of them pending,” said the Court..In its order, the Court recorded that the petitioner has been a practicing advocate in Murshidabad since 1977. After taking note that the petitioner has already filed an appeal, the Court directed the appellate tribunal to decide the matter within a fixed timeline.“The petitioner is stated to be a practicing advocate in Murshidabad from 1977. The aggrieved petitioner has filed an appeal before the appellate tribunal for inclusion in SIR. Since the appeal is not decided so far, we request the appellate tribunal to decide this expeditiously and preferably within 2 months,” ordered the Court..Advocate Shakeel Abbas appeared for the petitioner..The order comes amid continuing concerns over the scale of voter roll exclusions during the SIR exercise in West Bengal and delays in the appeal process.Data placed before the Court in related proceedings showed that over 58 lakh electors were excluded during the enumeration phase of the exercise. By January 2026, around 9.64 lakh applications for inclusion and 99,118 applications for deletion had been filed.However, only about 1.82 lakh additions were reflected in the final electoral rolls published on February 28, 2026, raising questions over the gap between claims filed and names restored.Concerns have also been raised over the lack of detailed, constituency-wise data on these additions and deletions, as well as the absence of publicly available guidelines for filing and deciding appeals before SIR tribunals.The issue has gained significance as lakhs of voters whose names were excluded are now dependent on the appellate mechanism for the restoration of their names to the voter roll, even as tribunals face a heavy backlog of cases..Supreme Court upholds validity of SIR of electoral rolls, says ECI can examine citizenship.[Read Live Coverage]
