Kolkata: The Election Commission’s special observer during West Bengal’s special intensive revision (SIR) has told The Wire that he had no information that the Chief Electoral Officer’s office had filed lakhs of appeals seeking to remove voters whom judicial officers had cleared.Subrata Gupta, who served as the ECI’s special roll observer for the SIR exercise in West Bengal, told The Wire earlier this week that the observers’ work ended with the supplementary rolls. “Up to the publication of these supplementary rolls, the observers had a role in ensuring that the supplementary rolls were published,” he said.Those rolls listed the voters judicial officers had ruled on, about 33 lakh retained and 27 lakh deleted. Of the deleted voters, Gupta said, “After that, among the 27 lakh people whose names were deleted by the judicial officers, I have heard that a large number filed appeals seeking inclusion. However, we did not have access to those records.”Gupta said he had heard only informally of the appeals against the voters whom judges had cleared, and those whose eligibility a judicial officer had already examined and upheld. “We are now also learning that there were many other appeals challenging the retention of individuals on the electoral rolls,” he said. “We had heard about this earlier, but there was no official communication to us about it.”“So, when you say that such a large number of appeals have been filed, that is information we are now receiving,” Gupta said. “We had no information about these appeals being filed or having been filed.”Gupta, a retired IAS officer of the 1990 batch and a former secretary in the Union Ministry of Food Processing Industries, now advises the state’s new chief minister Suvendu Adhikari. His account came a day after the Commission told the Supreme Court who filed those appeals. In a counter-affidavit filed on October 26, the ECI said a communication dated October 22 from the CEO’s office stated that “the said Appeals have been filed by the officers of the Office of the CEO, West Bengal, in their capacity as authorities under the RP Act”. It added that “the officers had the authority to file the Appeals as per the orders of this Hon’ble Court and these matters were not brought to the Commission”.Also read: Did the EC Software Switch Bengal Voters Already Decided by EROs Over to Judges Overnight?Manoj Kumar Agarwal, the CEO who ran the SIR and the assembly election, went on to become the state’s chief secretary.The Commission told the court in September that 16,10,311 such appeals had been filed. Appeal records collected and verified by the Civic Research Group and provided to The Wire show appeals against 16,08,175 of the 32,53,401 cleared voters in the records, or 49.4%. Most were lodged in a single batch on April 5, two days before the roll was frozen for the Assembly election, according to an analysis of the appeal IDs.Gupta is not the only official to say he was in the dark. Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu asked in a file note on August 12, according to the petition before the Supreme Court, “Who was authorised to file these appeals on behalf of ECI, and by whom?” The Indian Express has reported that Sandhu said that neither he, nor Election Commissioner Vivek Joshi, or West Bengal’s CEO knew the basis on which, or the process by which, the appeals were filed.The Wire has written to the West Bengal CEO and the Additional CEO asking which officers filed the appeals, on whose decision, and on what grounds. For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.