West Bengal SIR: Congress' Prasenjit Bose moves Supreme Court for details on voter deletions, additions

Congress leader Prasenjit Bose has moved the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to disclose constituency-wise data on additions and deletions made during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal and to make public the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) governing appeals before SIR Appellate Tribunals.

The petition has sought disclosure of the number of Form 6 and Form 7 applications submitted, admitted and rejected in each constituency during the claims and objections phase of the SIR exercise.

It also seeks directions to publish the SOP framed by a three-member committee of former judges pursuant to Supreme Court orders and to issue simplified guidelines on the appeal process in Bengali, Hindi and English.

As per the petition, while more than 58 lakh electors were excluded during the enumeration phase of the SIR exercise, the Election Commission has not disclosed constituency-wise data regarding applications for inclusion and deletion of names from electoral rolls.

The plea states that by January 2026, over 9.64 lakh applications seeking inclusion of names in electoral rolls and 99,118 applications seeking deletions had been received. However, only 1.82 lakh additions were reflected in the final electoral rolls published on February 28, 2026.

The petition argues that the absence of constituency-wise data and non-publication of formats prescribed under the Election Commission’s Electoral Rolls Manual, 2024 raises concerns regarding transparency, accountability and public scrutiny of the revision process.

The plea also questions the process adopted to examine more than 60 lakh cases flagged for “logical discrepancies”, including parent-child age gaps, multiple progeny linkages and name mismatches. According to Bose, these criteria were neither part of the SIR notifications nor traceable to any provision of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.

Bose has further alleged that despite the Supreme Court directing the constitution of 19 appellate tribunals to hear challenges to additions and deletions in electoral rolls, the appellate process continues to suffer from a lack of procedural clarity.

The petition points out that the SOP framed on April 7 by a committee comprising former judges of the Calcutta High Court has not been made public. It claims that there are no publicly available guidelines regarding filing of appeals, production of documents, issuance of notices, conduct of hearings or timelines for disposal.

The plea also refers to a West Bengal government notification governing the Annapurna Yojana welfare scheme, under which persons removed from electoral rolls would cease to be beneficiaries unless they had filed appeals before the SIR Tribunals. It argues that wrongful deletion from electoral rolls could have consequences beyond voting rights and affect access to welfare benefits.

The Supreme Court had earlier monitored the SIR exercise in West Bengal through a series of orders in Mostari Banu v Election Commission of India, directing the creation of appellate tribunals headed by former High Court judges and requiring procedural safeguards for persons affected by additions and deletions in electoral rolls.

The present petition has been filed days after the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the Bihar SIR exercise in a judgment delivered on May 27. While upholding the SIR process, the Court observed that a series of “structural correctives” introduced during the exercise ensured procedural fairness and prevented arbitrary exclusion of voters.