SC declines urgent hearing on appeals against SIR exclusions ahead of bypolls

A plea seeking the Supreme Court’s urgent intervention into alleged discrepancies in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal, which has left lakhs of people out of the electoral rolls ahead of by-elections in the state, was declined on Monday, with Chief Justice Surya Kant observing, “These are only bye-elections, that’s all.”

The bench, which included Justice Joymalya Bagchi, refused to advance the hearing of appeals challenging decisions taken during the voter-roll revision, despite a counsel pointing out that by-elections in the Rejinagar and Nandigram Assembly constituencies are scheduled for October 6. The matter, which had earlier been listed for September 29 and was subsequently tentatively scheduled for October 29, was listed for October 5 instead, reported Bar and Bench.

The counsel told the court that unless the pending appeals were decided before the by-polls, the affected voters would be missing out on their right to vote for a second time. He was referring to the West Bengal Assembly elections held on April 23 and 29, when thousands of voters were unable to participate while their claims concerning the electoral rolls remained unresolved.

The scale of the backlog has remained substantial. According to figures submitted by the Election Commission on September 16, around 38.2 lakh appeals had been filed before 19 appellate tribunals established following a Supreme Court order of March 10, but only about 1.2 lakh had been disposed of, leaving more than 37 lakh cases pending.

Of the appeals, 22.2 lakh were filed by voters whose names had been deleted from the rolls, representing nearly 82 per cent of the 27 lakh voters placed under adjudication during the revision. Another 16.1 lakh appeals challenged the inclusion of voters, although the Election Commission did not specify who had filed them.

The counsel also told the bench that more than 18,000 appeals remained pending and warned that the affected voters had already been excluded from the previous election. The Election Commission has indicated that the number of tribunals could be increased to 42, corresponding with West Bengal’s parliamentary constituencies.

During earlier hearings, Justice Bagchi had raised concerns over the consequences of voters being excluded while the adjudication process remained incomplete, asking what would happen if the number of disenfranchised voters exceeded the eventual winning margin.

The Calcutta High Court had similarly observed in July that, at the prevailing pace, the tribunals could take 21 years to dispose of all the appeals.