Kolkata: Thirty-eight-year old Mohammad Selim Reza, a teacher at a government primary school, was the booth-level officer for polling station number 186 in Bengal’s Farakka, during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.Appointed by the Election Commission of India, he helped hundreds of local residents access and fill their forms and furnish their documents since the enumeration exercise began in November 2025. When the electoral rolls were frozen for the assembly election in April, his own name was marked ‘under adjudication’. This meant that he could not vote. Seven months later, his name is still ‘under adjudication.’Reza is one of 1,914 voters in three polling stations of Mahadebnagar gram panchayat, in Murshidabad’s Farakka assembly constituency, who booth-level officers (BLOs) say are still ‘under adjudication’ because the judicial review of their cases never took place. All 1,914 of them are Muslim.Md Selim Reza’s voter’s ID card.Across 11 of Murshidabad’s 22 Assembly constituencies, the electoral rolls for 304 polling stations, examined by The Wire, record 29,347 voters still “under adjudication”, five times the number the CEO’s office reports for the whole state. At least 26,000 of them are Muslims.These numbers are smaller than the lakhs whose appeals are at the tribunals, but they, nonetheless, show how a real chunk of voters are left in the limbo.The electoral roll for those polling stations, revised up to April 6 before the final rolls appeared on April 9, and seen by The Wire, records 1,914 ‘under adjudication’ and none deleted or cleared by judicial officers.The official count is far smaller. In memos dated October 12 and 29, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, told the Calcutta high court that across the entire state of Bengal, 815 cases had still not been decided by judicial officers. The three polling stations in Mahadebnagar alone account for more than twice that number.The official count of these voters has shifted at every stage. The Election Commission’s own “Individuals Under Adjudication” report from the ECINET file stamped at the 17:52 mark on April 9, 2026, seen by The Wire, shows that when judicial review ended in April, judges had not decided the cases of 22,163 voters and a further 83,504 decided but not signed. Under the Supreme Court’s orders, a voter placed under adjudication could return to the roll only once a judicial officer cleared them. Without a decision, these voters could not vote in April. And because no final order has been issued, they cannot appeal to the SIR tribunals either.These are thus cases which were not decided – meaning that judges probably did not get the time or opportunity to decide on these cases. Right now, they are neither deleted from nor added to the rolls. As a result, they cannot even apply to the tribunals – where, anyway, the number of cases pending is in the lakhs.In its counter-affidavit to the Supreme Court on 26 October, the Election Commission stated that the SIR process “has been completed” under its orders of June and October 2025.In Farakka, more than the official countAccording to the Election Commission’s own records, Farakka had 3,183 undecided cases when the rolls were frozen, the second-highest in the state. Two BLOs and one voter of the Mahadebnagar gram panchayat told The Wire that judicial review has not yet taken place in at least three polling stations.“In Farakka block alone, there are many cases under adjudication,” a BLO told The Wire. More than 2,000 of them are under adjudication in Mahadebnagar. “We are BLOs, and even we haven’t received any formal information about what needs to be done,” he added.Mohammad Saddam Hossain, a voter in Part 192 of the Farakka assembly constituency, was called for a hearing over a discrepancy involving the “Md” in his name and his father’s. He submitted his PAN card, secondary exam admit card, Aadhaar card and voter ID card. His parents’ and younger sister’s names are on the roll. His is not. “They just keep saying, ‘It will happen, it will happen,’ and send us away,” he said to The Wire. The cost goes beyond the vote. Among the 1,914 are at least 874 women. In Part 192, Hossain said, women still under adjudication have stopped receiving payments under the state’s Annapurna Bhandar scheme. “Only those whose names are on the voter list are receiving the money.” A state government notification of May 19 is reported to protect payments for women who have filed tribunal appeals. But voters whose cases were never decided cannot file one at all. The Wire has reached out to Minister of State (independent charge) Malati Rava Roy, of the Department of Women and Child Development and Social Welfare, for comments on the status of beneficiaries vis-a-vis their position in the voter rolls. This report will be updated when a response is received.Constituency by constituency The polling stations The voters still waiting are concentrated. In 85 of the 304 polling stations, at least 100 voters remain under adjudication. In 17, at least 500 do, 10,445 voters in all. Where the cases were never decidedIn 67 of the state’s 294 constituencies, cases are still undecided. More than half, 12,337, were in Murshidabad. Purba Bardhaman had 5,194 and South 24 Parganas 3,374.In Khandaghosh, judges have not yet decided one in every eight of the constituency’s adjudication cases. In Jalangi, they have not decided one in every ten.The unfinished status mattered again in Nandigram and Rejinagar, where by-elections were held on October 6. When the rolls were frozen in April, Nandigram had 256 unfinished cases. One was not decided and 255 were decided. However, the status of the 255 decided cases were not electronically signed on by a judge. Of the 255, as many as 177 were voters whom a judge had found eligible to vote. Rejinagar had five, all decisions to delete, awaiting a signature.Judicial officers’ logins – necessary for e-signing on a decision – were reactivated on August 6, two months before the by-elections. The CEO’s office has not said whether these voters’ cases had been decided upon in time for them to vote on October 6. It lists the cases still pending by constituency in an annexure to its memos, which has not been made public. The Wire has asked the CEO how many Nandigram and Rejinagar voters remained under adjudication on polling day, and how many remain today.Note that these numbers are separate from the 18,895 appeals which were recorded at the time when these two seats went to the bypolls.What happened after the freezeAfter the rolls were frozen on April 6, judicial officers’ logins on ECINET were deactivated. Letters from the CEO’s office, seen by The Wire, show what followed.On August 7, the Additional CEO wrote to the Registrar General of the Calcutta high court that, regarding adjudication cases “where e-signing was missed and other cases”, the Election Commission had been asked to reactivate the judicial officers’ logins. The Commission had informed the office by email on August 6 that the logins had been reactivated, four months after the freeze.This is a rather long time. “No voter to be left behind” has been the Election Commission’s slogan since 2011. In October, as the West Bengal CEO’s office launched a drive to enrol voters left out of the roll, it repeated the promise: “No eligible voter is to be left out.” But voters still under adjudication have been left out of that promise too.The Election Commission’s own figures say that more than a lakh of people were left with no final decision when the rolls were frozen in April. Seven months later, the rolls of 11 Murshidabad constituencies alone record 29,347 still waiting.On October 12, the Additional CEO wrote again. There were “815 no. of cases” that “have not been decided by the Judicial Officers till date”, and 5,004 decided but not e-signed. He asked the Registrar General to have the judges decide and sign them “at the earliest”.The Bengal CEO’s ‘memo’ to the Calcutta high court registrar.On October 29, he wrote a third time, with exactly the same figures. It is unclear what prompted these letters, although it is evident that the Election Commission is under pressure to include names wrongfully deleted under the ‘absentee, shifted, duplicate or dead’ categories. In 17 days, not one case had moved. The letter cited a new deadline. The Commission has announced a Special Summary Revision of the rolls, and the integrated draft roll is to be published on November 23, 2026. The same day, the office asked all district election officers to report on disposal of these cases by November 3.This means that between April and October, 21,348 of the 22,163 undecided cases were decided. The records do not show when, by whom – while the login IDs were inactive – or how many of those voters were found eligible. Whatever the judges decided, it came too late for the April election.Neither on the roll nor able to appealThe 815 voters still waiting fall between two systems. A voter struck off by a judicial officer can appeal to the appellate tribunals. A voter cleared and signed is back on the roll. A voter whose case has never been decided has no order at all.Farakka is not the only constituency where voters were left without a decision. In Samserganj, the electoral roll for part 23, revised up to 6 April and seen by The Wire, shows that judicial officers did review the polling station, and deleted 50 voters after adjudication. But five voters, four men and a woman, are still recorded on ECINET as ‘under adjudication’. One of them is Mohammad Zimfarhad Nowaj, a resident of Dhulian, whose case was never decided.The pattern recurs elsewhere in Murshidabad. In Suti, 71 voters in polling station 241 remain under adjudication. In Nabagram, 57 voters in polling station 30 do. When the roll was frozen, the ECINET report recorded 820 undecided cases in Suti and 392 in Nabagram, where more than a third of all adjudication cases, 7,349, were unfinished.Across the six polling stations The Wire has examined in Farakka, Samserganj, Suti and Nabagram, at least 2,047 voters remain under adjudication, more than twice the 815 undecided cases the CEO’s office reports for the whole state.On October 22, Nowaj filed an application under the Right to Information Act asking the Commission about voters in exactly this position. He wrote that they are “neither included in the active voter list nor able to file appeals before the Appellate Tribunals due to the lack of a final disposal order”, and asked for the rules that keep them in that status, the number still affected, the reasons for the delay and the deadline for final orders.Decided, but not signedThe undecided cases were not the only unfinished ones. The ECINET report shows a further 83,504 cases that judges had decided but not e-signed when the roll was frozen, among them 44,027 voters found eligible. A decision becomes an entry on the roll only once it is signed. By October, at least 5,004 were still unsigned.What the Commission has not saidOn November 5, The Wire asked the CEO, West Bengal, why 22,163 cases had not been decided by the time the roll was frozen, and why they were described publicly as awaiting only an e-signature. It has asked when those cases were decided, by whom while judicial officers’ logins were inactive, and how many of those voters were found eligible. This report will be updated when the CEO’s office responds.“No voter to be left behind” has been the Election Commission’s slogan since 2011. In October, as the West Bengal CEO’s office launched a drive to enrol voters left out of the roll, it repeated the promise: “No eligible voter is to be left out.”The voters still under adjudication have been left out of that promise too. They are not on the roll, so they cannot vote. They have not been struck off, so they have no order to take to a tribunal. And it is not clear the enrolment drive can reach them, because it relies on Form 6, the application for new voters, and these are not new voters. Many, like Md Selim Reza, have voted for years.On the Commission’s own figures, more than a lakh of them were left with no final decision when the roll was frozen in April. Seven months later, the rolls of 11 Murshidabad constituencies alone record 29,347 still waiting. They were not left behind by accident but clearly in a category the system created, and then stopped counting.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.