The gap in Bengal's Post-SIR enrolment drive

The Election Commission’s new post-SIR enrolment drive is meant to give eligible voters left out of the final electoral rolls another route back onto the voter list. In West Bengal, however, it opens a more difficult question: what happens to voters who were deleted during the Special Intensive Revision, challenged that deletion and are still waiting for their appeals to be decided?

The distinction matters because Bengal’s SIR has already produced a large appellate backlog — and the available record suggests that the voters caught inside it may not receive the same remedy as those simply classified as left out.

The EC has directed Booth Level Officers in States where SIR has been completed to compare pre-SIR rolls with the final electoral rolls, identify eligible people who were left out and facilitate their enrolment through Form 6. The exercise is to be completed within a month. But a senior EC official has indicated that people whose appeals are already pending before Bengal’s appellate tribunals are a separate category because their cases are 'under adjudication'.

That puts West Bengal at the centre of the problem.

During the State’s SIR, 27,16,393 electors were ultimately deleted after adjudication of around 60 lakh doubtful cases. Of those deleted voters, more than 22.21 lakh — nearly 81.8% — filed appeals seeking restoration of their names.

But the often-cited figure of 38.31 lakh appeals needs to be read differently. It does not mean 38.31 lakh deleted voters were fighting to get back on the rolls.

The EC told the Supreme Court that the total comprised 22,21,118 appeals filed by excluded electors seeking their inclusion or restoration, and another 16,10,311 appeals challenging the inclusion of electors who had survived the SIR.

In other words, there are two separate contests inside the tribunal system: deleted voters seeking to return, and objectors seeking to remove voters who remained on the roll.

That distinction is critical to understanding the new enrolment drive.

The tribunal record makes the question harder still. An RTI-based assessment of the position on August 7 showed that 82,782 of 38,07,838 appeals had been decided — just 2.17%. Of those decided cases, 75,443 resulted in restoration and 7,339 upheld the exclusion, producing a restoration rate of 91.13%.

The figure does not establish that 91.13% of all SIR deletions were wrong. It represents only the cases decided by that date — a tiny fraction of the total appeal pool. But it does establish something important: among the appeals that had been adjudicated, more than nine out of ten ended with the voter being put back on the roll.

And the backlog is not merely a question of administrative speed. IFF’s analysis notes that about 74% of the 27.16 lakh electors deleted after adjudication did not appeal at all. Of the appeals that were filed, only around seven lakh of the overall 38-lakh-plus pool were by excluded electors; roughly 31 lakh sought removal of electors already included, with more than 20 lakh reportedly initiated by the Commission itself against restorations ordered by adjudicating authorities.

That makes the new drive’s premise particularly important.

If a voter has already been deleted and has formally challenged that deletion, why should the remedy be re-enrolment rather than restoration?

The EC’s position is that tribunal-bound appellants cannot simply be folded into the special drive because their cases are already under adjudication. The practical consequence, as reported, could be that these appellants wait years for their cases to conclude while other eligible voters excluded from the final roll obtain a potentially faster route through the new exercise.

That creates a potential two-track system for citizens who have experienced the same outcome — exclusion from the electoral roll.

One voter can be treated as someone who was left out and assisted through Form 6. Another, whose deletion is formally under challenge, remains inside a tribunal process whose disposal rate has so far been extremely low.

The timing makes this especially consequential in Bengal. The Nandigram and Rejinagar bypolls are scheduled for October 6, while thousands of SIR appeals remain pending in the two constituencies. More than 12,000 appeals are pending in Rejinagar and over 6,000 in Nandigram, according to recent reporting.

There is also a procedural problem with treating restoration as fresh enrolment.

Form 6 is ordinarily meant for inclusion as an elector and requires a declaration that the applicant is applying for inclusion for the first time. A person who was already on the electoral roll and maintains that their name was wrongly deleted is therefore being placed in a legally awkward position if asked to use the same route to return. The problem has surfaced elsewhere too: in Goa, voters whose Form 8 applications were rejected during SIR have objected to being directed towards Form 6, arguing that the declaration does not accurately describe their circumstances.

The larger issue is therefore not simply whether the EC is offering voters another opportunity to enrol.

It is whether the new mechanism addresses the consequences of SIR or merely creates a parallel route around them.

Bengal’s appellate record makes that distinction difficult to ignore. The SIR removed more than 27 lakh electors after adjudication. More than 22 lakh of those deleted voters challenged their exclusion. The tribunal system has so far decided only a fraction of its enormous caseload, and more than nine in ten decided appeals resulted in restoration. Meanwhile, the new enrolment mechanism appears not to cover those whose cases are already before the tribunals.

That leaves the Election Commission facing a question that goes beyond the mechanics of Form 6.

If a citizen has already challenged a deletion that may ultimately be found wrongful, can asking that citizen to wait for adjudication be considered an adequate remedy when another excluded citizen can seek re-enrolment through a faster route?

For West Bengal, the real issue is no longer simply how many names the EC can add back to the rolls.

It is whether a voter’s route back to the ballot depends on whether the system merely left their name out — or first deleted it and made them fight to prove they belonged there.