The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday ruled that it could not impose a fixed timeline for appellate tribunals reviewing challenges to voter deletions in West Bengal during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process. The decision came as the court considered a petition filed by Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who sought faster resolution of cases tied to the controversial voter roll revisions. A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant emphasized that while it could not dictate a schedule for the tribunals, it required the Election Commission of India to submit detailed records of how many cases had been resolved and how many remained outstanding. This directive followed earlier concerns raised by the Calcutta High Court, which estimated that unresolved appeals could take over two decades to complete if the current pace continued. The SIR process, initiated ahead of the April Assembly elections, aimed to clean up electoral rolls by removing duplicate, deceased, and ineligible voters. Initially, the final rolls published in February excluded more than 61 lakh voters, prompting a series of supplementary lists and adjudications. By April 6, approximately 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of West Bengal’s pre-revision electorate, had been removed from the rolls. The process left behind a backlog of around 34 lakh appeals, with 27 lakh of them filed by individuals whose names had been excluded. Despite this, the tribunals managed to reinstate 1,607 names back into the electoral rolls. The delay in resolving these appeals has sparked broader administrative and social repercussions. In July, the Calcutta High Court noted that pending appeals could take “21 years…if appellate tribunals function at the current pace.” This estimate was based on the slow progress of the tribunals, which have processed only a fraction of the appeals. Senior advocate Rauf Rahim, representing Chowdhury, highlighted the real-world implications of such delays, linking the exclusion from the voter list to the denial of essential welfare services like ration cards. He argued that the appellate process should be time-bound to prevent citizens from being deprived of their rights and entitlements. The issue gained further traction when the state government issued directives affecting welfare schemes. On May 19, the ruling BJP government notified that beneficiaries of the Annapurna Yojana, a cash transfer program for women, would be excluded from receiving aid unless they had filed appeals before the SIR tribunal. Subsequently, on June 4, the state directed the cancellation of PDS benefits for those excluded from the SIR list. Earlier, on May 14, the government had mandated re-verification of caste certificates for names removed from the SIR list. These actions underscored the far-reaching consequences of the SIR process, extending beyond the realm of voting rights to affect livelihoods and social security. In response to these developments, the Supreme Court took up a similar petition filed by Prasenjit Bose, the chairperson of the SIR Committee within the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee. Bose had previously warned that the deletions from the electoral rolls had triggered serious civil consequences, including loss of access to public services. During the hearing, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, part of the three-judge bench, suggested that if the tribunals failed to meet performance benchmarks, the court might consider restructuring the entire system of case disposal. However, the court stopped short of imposing a strict deadline, instead focusing on gathering data to assess the situation more accurately. Meanwhile, the SIR process has drawn attention beyond West Bengal. In Karnataka, Bengaluru has become a focal point of controversy, with nearly half of its electors classified under the ASDDO (Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead and Others) category during the house-to-house enumeration phase. Some residents, including actor Prakash Raj, have claimed their names were mistakenly deleted from the voter list, raising questions about the accuracy and transparency of the entire process. As the legal and administrative battles continue, the focus remains on ensuring that the rights of affected citizens are protected and that the bureaucratic machinery functions efficiently.
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