19 000 électeurs du Bengale occidental manqueront les urnes partielles alors que les appels sont toujours en instance devant les tribunaux

Nearly 19,000 voters in West Bengal’s Nandigram and Rejinagar Assembly constituencies will miss the upcoming bypolls on October 6, 2026, as their appeals remain unresolved in tribunals. This issue affects over 38.31 lakh voters statewide, many of whom have yet to see their cases resolved due to the slow progress of the Appellate Tribunals. The Calcutta High Court noted in July that at the current pace, clearing all cases could take 21 years. In Rejinagar, 12,452 appeals have been filed, with only four approved so far. In Nandigram, 6,443 appeals were submitted, and just 89 have been accepted. No exclusions have occurred in either constituency. Overall, only 1.26 lakh of the total 38.31 lakh appeals have been cleared, representing about 3% of all cases. The Election Commission of India established 19 Appellate Tribunals in March, but three judges, Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, Justice Ranjit Bag, and Justice Indrajit Chatterjee, have resigned, leaving only 16 tribunals operational. The EC’s plan to expand the tribunals to 42 has stalled, with the Supreme Court originally set to review the matter on October 5 but not listing it. A special door-to-door effort to re-enroll voters missed during the Special Intensive Revision process via Form 6 will not apply to those affected. The Appellate Tribunals were formed under the Supreme Court’s oversight following the SIR process, which identified around 60 lakh doubtful cases. Judicial officers reviewed these, restoring 32.77 lakh voters while rejecting 27.23 lakh, of whom 22 lakh appealed. The EC created the tribunals on March 21, with operations starting around April 13. A Supreme Court order on April 16 allowed successful appeal holders to be added via a supplementary list, though only 136 names were cleared before the April 23 elections. Over 16 million bulk appeals were filed, increasing the pending case count to more than 38 lakh.