West Bengal SIR: Supreme Court demands data on appeals as municipal polls close in

Five months after setting up 19 appellate tribunals to handle appeals from West Bengal's special intensive revision (SIR), the Supreme Court emphasized on August 25, 2026, that information about these proceedings remains meager or conjectural, as municipal elections approach. A three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant ordered the Election Commission of India (ECI) to file an affidavit detailing the exact number of appeals requesting inclusion and those seeking exclusion of voters from the electoral rolls in West Bengal.

The court requested precise figures on the appeals pending in the tribunals and those already decided. They said they would reassess the need for more tribunals after verifying these statistics. The bench asked the ECI to devise a method for monitoring and simplifying the status of pending appeals. Justice Joymalya Bagchi pointed out that giving the data on the nature of appeals, either for inclusion or exclusion, would allow the court to decide whether to prioritize disenfranchised voters seeking reinclusion.

Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan and Neha Rathi, representing Prasenjit Bose, the chairperson of the SIR Committee, West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee, presented that about 38 lakh appeals were filed across the 19 tribunals, of which only 7 lakh were by disenfranchised voters. The remaining 31 lakh appeals were alleged to have been filed by the Election Commission or other objectors to exclude more individuals from the electoral rolls.

Sankaranarayanan contended that disenfranchised voters should receive priority over the majority of appeals filed by the ECI and other objectors. The Kolkata and Howrah municipal polls, expected to be as close as they were in December 2026, were mentioned in the context. Justice Bagchi remarked that if the reported statistics were accurate, 31 lakh appeals challenging the exclusion of voters was a "very large chunk".

He assured the disenfranchised voters of West Bengal that their appeals would be heard within a reasonable time. Sankaranarayanan said the top court had pledged to hear the appeals of the excluded voters in West Bengal soon. Senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee, also arguing for the petitioners, noted that numerous elections were slated for the State, leading up to the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.

"People must be able to exercise their right to vote," Banerjee said. "We stand with you on this point. Before the elections... at least, before the Parliament elections come, and much before that, everything should be decided," Chief Justice Kant affirmed.