An appeal mechanism is only as good as its capacity to deliver timely relief. Analyse this with reference to the appeals against electoral-roll deletions.

Under Section 24 of the RP Act, 1950, a voter unhappy with an Electoral Registration Officer's (ERO's) decision can appeal first to the District Magistrate and then to the Chief Electoral Officer [2]. Yet in West Bengal's Special Intensive Revision (SIR), only 1,607 of about 22 lakh deletion appeals led to reinstatement before the April poll [1]. In most of these cases, the right to appeal did not turn into a right to vote.

Why timeliness decides whether an appeal works

• Deletion is fast, restoration is slow: a name can be cut after a field check, but getting it back needs an appeal, a hearing and an order.
• Harm that cannot be undone: relief that comes after polling day cannot give back a lost vote.
• The claims stage does real correction work: Bihar's draft roll of about 7.24 crore rose to about 7.45 crore final electors after claims and objections [3]. This shows that correction happens at the hearing stage. If that stage is squeezed, the errors stay.

Capacity gaps exposed by SIR

• Scale: Phase-II alone covered about 51 crore electors across 321 districts and 1,843 constituencies [4]. SIR now spans 20 States/UTs [1].
• Tribunal backlog: West Bengal's Appellate Tribunals, built for routine cases, could not clear lakhs of appeals before the poll [1].
• Timing: running a revision just before an election leaves very little time for hearings.
• Trust deficit: the plea for a panel of retired judges and retired CECs/ECs, and for a stay on further SIR proceedings [1], shows that people doubt the ECI can review its own work.

The other side

• Cleaning the rolls is a legitimate aim. The ECI points to several safeguards: repeated visits by Booth Level Officers (BLOs), deletion only with recorded reasons, publication of draft rolls, and Booth Level Agents (BLAs) from political parties checking entries [2].
• A high number of appeals does not by itself prove wrongful deletion. However, safeguards that exist on paper do not give relief in time.

Way forward

• Time-bound disposal of appeals before the roll is frozen for an election.
• Provisional retention: appellants stay on the roll until their appeal is decided.
• Booth-wise publication of deleted names with reasons.
• Add temporary tribunal benches, and schedule SIR well away from elections.

A clean roll and an inclusive roll are both needed for a credible election, and they can only be reconciled if appeals are decided on time. Building deadlines and capacity into the appeal system would protect the universal adult suffrage promised by Article 326 and advance SDG 16.7 (inclusive decision-making). Justice delayed at the tribunal is effectively a vote denied at the booth.