Over 22 lakh voters have challenged exclusion: EC

1. At a Glance

• Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal has generated a massive appeals backlog — over 38 lakh appeals filed, with 37+ lakh pending before appellate tribunals [1].
• Tests UPSC aspirants on Article 324 (EC's superintendence over electoral rolls), RP Act 1950, and the tension between electoral roll purity vs. citizen disenfranchisement.
• Directly linked to the ongoing SC-monitored SIR litigation and upcoming West Bengal municipal/assembly polls.

2. Why in the News

• EC filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court (September 2026) stating 16.10 lakh appeals were filed against inclusion and a total of 38.31 lakh appeals filed overall in WB SIR tribunals [1].
• Of these, the 19 appellate tribunals have decided only 1,26,194 appeals; an earlier affidavit cited a disposal figure of 1,02,231 (likely the August cut-off) [1].
• 37.05 lakh+ appeals remain pending — over 22 lakh of these specifically challenge exclusion from the rolls, per the EC affidavit filed in response to a plea by TMC leader Derek O'Brien [1].
• EC agreed in principle to increase the number of tribunals, and to permit videoconferencing-based hearings via its location-agnostic hearing software [1].

3. Background & Evolution

• SIR (Special Intensive Revision) is an EC exercise for house-to-house enumeration and verification of electoral rolls, aimed at removing deceased/shifted/duplicate/non-citizen entries while safeguarding genuine electors [4].
• First major rollout: Bihar SIR (June–August 2025) — EC published a list of 65 lakh voters excluded from the Bihar draft roll on August 1, 2025 [4].
• Phase II extended SIR to nine States and three UTs; Phase III (2026) covers 16 States and 3 UTs, with Odisha, Mizoram, Sikkim, and Manipur completing final rolls by September 6, 2026, and other states extending into October–December 2026 [4].
• West Bengal SIR triggered litigation before the Supreme Court over process and disenfranchisement concerns, leading to the 19 Appellate Tribunals constituted by ECI for the state, one headed by former Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and the rest by former High Court judges [1].

4. Core Static Facts

Item	Detail
Nodal body	Election Commission of India (ECI)
Constitutional basis	Article 324 (superintendence, direction, control of electoral rolls)
Statutory basis	Representation of the People Act, 1950 (electoral roll preparation/revision)
Mechanism under challenge	Special Intensive Revision (SIR)
WB Appellate Tribunals	19, headed in part by ex-CJ T.S. Sivagnanam [1]
Total WB appeals filed	38,31,000 (approx.) [1]
Appeals against inclusion	16.10 lakh [1]
Appeals against exclusion	22+ lakh (implied balance) [1]
Appeals disposed (Sept. 2026)	1,26,194 [1]
Appeals pending	37.05 lakh+ [1]
Petitioner	Prasenjit Bose, Chairperson, SIR Committee, WB Pradesh Congress Committee [1]
Related original petitioner	Derek O'Brien, TMC [1]
Proposed tribunal expansion	Up to 42 (matching WB's Lok Sabha constituency count) [1]

5. Multi-Dimensional Analysis

Legal/Constitutional

• Raises questions on EC's quasi-judicial tribunal-creation powers and adequacy of appeal mechanisms under RP Act, 1950 [1].
• SC is monitoring compliance, reflecting judicial oversight of EC's plenary Article 324 powers.

Administrative

• Massive backlog (37 lakh+ pending) shows capacity mismatch between enumeration scale and adjudicatory infrastructure (only 19 tribunals for crores of voters) [1].
• EC's proposal to scale tribunals to 42 (matching WB's 42 Lok Sabha seats) shows an administrative fix tied to electoral geography, timed against nearing municipal polls [1].
• Adoption of videoconferencing, location-agnostic software signals digitisation of quasi-judicial hearings [1].

Social

• Exclusion appeals (22+ lakh) disproportionately affect vulnerable/marginal groups reliant on informal documentation, a recurring SIR criticism (seen earlier in Bihar's 65-lakh exclusion list) [4].

Ethical/Governance

• Balances electoral roll purity (removing bogus/duplicate entries) against risk of wrongful disenfranchisement, a core governance/accountability tension in SIR exercises nationwide [4].

Geopolitical/Political

• Politically charged given WB's federal-opposition dynamics (TMC, Congress) versus the Centre-appointed EC, ahead of WB's next major polls.

6. Recent Developments (last 12–18 months)

• June 2025: ECI begins SIR in Bihar [4].
• August 2025: EC publishes list of 65 lakh excluded voters from Bihar draft roll [4].
• Late 2025: SIR Phase II launched across nine states and three UTs [4].
• November 2025: ECI team visits West Bengal to review SIR implementation [S1/S3].
• January 2026: EC issues directions to implement SC's order on WB SIR [4].
• March 2026: ECI sets up 19 Appellate Tribunals in West Bengal for voter roll appeals [1].
• September 2026: EC affidavit in SC discloses 38.31 lakh total appeals, 37+ lakh pending, and agrees to expand tribunals and enable videoconferencing [1].

7. Prelims Hooks

• SIR stands for Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, conducted by the ECI [4].
• West Bengal's SIR appeals are heard by 19 Appellate Tribunals, one headed by former Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam [1].
• As of September 2026, 38.31 lakh appeals were filed in WB SIR tribunals; 37.05 lakh+ remain pending [1].
• 16.10 lakh appeals filed against inclusion; balance (22+ lakh) against exclusion [1].
• The petition seeking increased tribunals was filed by Prasenjit Bose, chairperson of SIR Committee, WB Pradesh Congress Committee [1].
• Original SC plea was filed by TMC leader Derek O'Brien [1].
• EC proposed raising tribunal count to 42, matching WB's number of Lok Sabha (parliamentary) constituencies [1].
• EC's hearing software is described as "location-agnostic," enabling remote videoconference hearings [1].
• Bihar was the first state where SIR led to a mass draft-roll exclusion — 65 lakh voters removed (August 2025) [4].
• SIR Phase III (2026) covers 16 States and 3 UTs; some (Odisha, Mizoram, Sikkim, Manipur) completed final rolls by September 6, 2026 [4].
• Electoral roll revision power flows from Article 324 and the Representation of the People Act, 1950 — not the RP Act, 1951 (which governs conduct of elections, a common confusion point).

8. Why 42 Tribunals Still Will Not Clear This Pile

• The problem is speed, not just number of benches
• The 19 tribunals were set up in March 2026 and had decided 1,26,194 appeals by September 2026 [1].
• That is roughly 21,000 appeals a month for the whole state — about 1,100 per tribunal per month.

• At that speed, the 37.05 lakh pending appeals [1] would take well over a decade to finish.

• Even the proposed 42 tribunals only doubles the speed

• Going from 19 to 42 benches [1] roughly doubles output, not multiplies it tenfold.

• The pile would still take a few years to clear, while West Bengal's polls are near [1].

• Why that timing matters more than it sounds

• The electoral roll is frozen at a cut-off date before an election. A voter who wins their appeal after that date still could not vote in that election.
• So a pending appeal is, in practice, an exclusion for that poll — even if the person is later found to be a genuine elector.

9. The Appeal Right Is Thinner on Paper Than It Looks

• The clock is short and starts from the order, not from when you hear about it
• Under Section 24 of the RP Act, 1950 (the appeal provision for electoral roll orders), an appeal to the District Magistrate must be filed within 15 days of the order, and to the Chief Electoral Officer within 30 days [7].
• Delay can be condoned only if the officer accepts you had "sufficient cause" [7]. That is a discretion, not a right.

• A migrant worker away from the village may learn of deletion long after 15 days have passed.

• You pay to appeal, and you do not get the money back

• The rules say every application under Section 22 or 23 and every appeal under Section 24 must carry the prescribed fee, and that fee "shall in no case be refunded" [7].

• So a person wrongly struck off pays to be put back, and still pays even when the EC's own tribunal agrees the deletion was wrong.

• There is no legal deadline for deciding

• The law fixes deadlines for the citizen to file [7], but fixes none for the tribunal to decide.
• That one-sided design is exactly what a 37-lakh backlog exposes [1].

10. The Strongest Case For SIR, and Where It Still Falls Short

• Take the other side seriously first
• In May 2026 the Supreme Court upheld the EC's power to conduct SIR, saying roll revision is tied to free and fair elections [8].
• The Court said the SIR framework already has safeguards — notice, hearing, objections, speaking orders (written orders giving reasons) and appeals — to stop arbitrary exclusion [8].

• Also note: 16.10 lakh of the West Bengal appeals are against inclusion, not exclusion [1]. Citizens are complaining that wrong names were added, not only that right names were dropped. Roll purity is a real public demand, not only a government talking point.

• Now the honest answer

• The safeguard the Court leaned on is the appeal. In West Bengal that very safeguard has 37 lakh cases waiting in it [1].
• A safeguard that works only years later is a safeguard on paper for that election.
• So the Court's finding on power does not settle the question of capacity. Write it that way in an answer: the power is settled, the delivery is not.

11. Bihar Already Showed the Fault Line, and It Was Fixed Late

• Bihar's numbers moved a lot after people got a chance to reply
• The draft roll dropped about 65 lakh names; after claims and corrections the final deletion came down to about 47 lakh, with electors falling from 7.89 crore to 7.42 crore [10].

• So a large share of the first cut was corrected later. The first list was not the true list.

• The key relief came from the Court, not from the design

• The Supreme Court had to direct the EC to accept Aadhaar as an acceptable document and to let excluded voters file claims with it [9].

• If the document list had been wide from day one, many of those claims would never have been needed.

• The reasons for deletion were not easily visible

• ADR told the Supreme Court that the ECI had not disclosed the reasons for deleting the 65 lakh names from the Bihar draft roll [11].
• This matters directly: if you are not told why you were removed, your appeal is a guess. A guess-based appeal takes longer to decide, which feeds the backlog now seen in West Bengal [1].

12. Fixes, and Who Must Actually Do Them

• ECI should publish booth-wise reasons for every deletion, before the appeal window opens
• ADR's demand in the Bihar case was exactly this [11].

• A voter who knows the ground (dead / shifted / duplicate / document missing) can answer it in one page instead of filing a blind appeal.

• ECI should fix the document list widely at the start, not after the Court orders it

• In Bihar, Aadhaar became usable only after a Supreme Court direction [9].

• Doing this at the notification stage in later SIR phases removes a whole category of appeals before they are filed.

• ECI should keep a person on the roll until their exclusion appeal is decided

• The Supreme Court treated the appeal as the main protection against wrong removal [8].

• If the name is dropped while the appeal is pending, that protection arrives after the vote is lost.

• ECI and the Law Ministry should put a decision deadline in the rules

• Today the rules bind only the citizen — 15 days to the DM, 30 days to the CEO [7] — with nothing binding the deciding authority.

• A matching outer limit for disposal turns the tribunal expansion from 19 to 42 [1] into a promise with a date attached.

• ECI should refund the appeal fee where the exclusion is reversed

• The present rule says the fee is never refunded [7].
• Charging a citizen for the EC's own error is a small amount but a real barrier for the poorest appellants, who are the most likely to lack documents.

13. Anchors for Answers

• Data: 38.31 lakh SIR appeals filed in West Bengal, 37.05 lakh pending, only 1,26,194 decided by September 2026 [1]
• Data: 16.10 lakh of those appeals are against inclusion of names, not exclusion [1]
• Data: Bihar SIR — draft deletions of about 65 lakh fell to about 47 lakh in the final roll; electors went from 7.89 crore to 7.42 crore [10]
• Law/Case: Article 324; Representation of the People Act, 1950 — Section 24 appeal (15 days to District Magistrate, 30 days to Chief Electoral Officer, fee non-refundable) [7]
• Law/Case: Supreme Court, May 2026 — upheld ECI's power to conduct SIR as necessary for free and fair elections, relying on notice, hearing, speaking orders and appeal as safeguards [8]
• Law/Case: Supreme Court direction that ECI accept Aadhaar as an acceptable document for Bihar SIR claims [9]
• Report/Committee: Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) submission to the Supreme Court, August 2025 — ECI did not disclose reasons for the 65 lakh Bihar draft-roll deletions [11]
• Scheme: SIR Phase III (2026), covering 16 States and 3 UTs — the West Bengal backlog is the live test case for every state still in the queue [4]

14. Mains Relevance

• GS-II: Polity & Governance — "Salient features of the Representation of People's Act," "Appointment to various Constitutional posts, powers, functions and responsibilities of various Constitutional Bodies" (Election Commission).
• GS-II: Governance — transparency, accountability, and issues of citizen rights and disenfranchisement.
• Possible Mains stems: 1. Discuss the constitutional and statutory basis of the Election Commission's power to conduct Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Critically examine the safeguards against wrongful disenfranchisement. (GS-II, 15 marks) 2. The scale of appeals arising from the Special Intensive Revision exercise reveals gaps in India's electoral appellate infrastructure. Comment. (GS-II, 10 marks) 3. Balancing electoral roll purity with inclusiveness is a challenge for any large democracy. Discuss with reference to recent Special Intensive Revision exercises in India. (GS-II, 15 marks)

15. Related Topics to Study Next

• Bihar SIR controversy (2025) — precedent case with 65 lakh exclusions; useful comparator.
• Article 324 and composition of the Election Commission — constitutional foundation for EC's roll-revision powers.
• Representation of the People Act, 1950 vs. 1951 — distinguishes roll preparation from election conduct provisions.
• Aadhaar-EPIC linkage debate — related electoral roll integrity/technology issue.
• One Nation One Election — broader electoral reform context involving EC's expanded role.
• Citizenship determination and NRC (Assam) — parallel debate on documentary proof and exclusion of citizens.
• Judicial review of EC's administrative orders — SC's oversight role, relevant precedents (e.g., Mohinder Singh Gill case).

16. Common Errors / Trap Areas

• Confusing SIR (Special Intensive Revision) with routine "Summary Revision" of electoral rolls — SIR is a more intensive, house-to-house exercise.
• Mixing up RP Act, 1950 (electoral rolls/constituencies) with RP Act, 1951 (conduct of elections, disputes) — SIR falls under the 1950 Act.
• Assuming all 22 lakh "exclusion" appellants have already been proven wrongly excluded — these are pending appeals, not confirmed reinstatements.
• Attributing tribunal composition/appointment solely to judiciary — appellate tribunals here are constituted by the EC, staffed by retired judges, not a permanent judicial body.
• Assuming SIR is West-Bengal-specific — it is a pan-India, phased exercise (Bihar first, then Phase II/III covering multiple states/UTs).