Kolkata: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has filed appeals seeking to remove nearly half of the West Bengal voters whom judicial officers cleared during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), according to appeal records individually collected and verified by the Civic Research Group, an independent group of researchers, analysts and field contributors in West Bengal.The records cover 30,00,545 voters who were placed under adjudication, had their documents examined by judicial officers, and were found eligible and restored to the roll. But as of October 17, appeals have been made against the inclusion of at least 14,75,887 of them, or 49.2%, nearly half, before the state’s SIR appellate tribunals. The Commission is the appellant in these cases.These are people who have already been through two rounds of scrutiny. The Commission has not disclosed on what grounds it is challenging these voters, and who exactly decided to file the appeals.On February 28 this year, 60.06 lakh West Bengal voters were placed “under adjudication” after ECI software flagged them for “logical discrepancies” or failed to link them to the 2002 roll. As per the Supreme Court’s directions, judges and judicial officers drawn from West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand, working under the apex court’s supervision, deleted 27.16 lakh of them and found 32.68 lakh eligible. The Commission is now asking the tribunals to reverse almost half of those found eligible for inclusion.In 222 of the state’s 294 constituencies, the Commission appealed against between 40% and 60% of the voters that the judges had cleared. The lowest share, in any seat, was 21%. The highest was 80%.These matter as the right to vote of each person who was on the rolls in 2024 is sacrosanct. But they also matter politically. For example, in 29 constituencies, appeals against inclusion by the Election Commission outnumber the winning margin in the 2026 assembly election.Where the appeals areJust three districts, Malda, Murshidabad and Uttar Dinajpur, comprise 44.6% of all appeals against inclusion made by the Election Commission.Malda alone accounts for as many as 3,03,896 appeals, more than a fifth of the state total. Murshidabad has 2,07,495 and Uttar Dinajpur 1,45,969.The single largest number is in Sujapur, in Malda, where the Commission has appealed against the inclusion of 61,036 voters. That is 57% of the voters judges cleared there, and almost one-fourth of the constituency’s entire draft roll. Ten seats account for 23% of all appeals in the state.SeatDistrictAppeals against inclusionShare of cleared votersShare of draft rollMinority share2026 winner2021 winnerSujapurMalda61,03656.7%23.8%75.4%TMCTMCRatuaMalda37,80854.9%13.6%53.7%TMCTMCChanchalMalda34,95850.1%14.2%52.0%TMCTMCRaghunathganjMurshidabad33,85553.8%13.5%75.1%TMCTMCChakuliaUttar Dinajpur32,56853.8%14.2%53.3%TMCTMCMalatipurMalda32,02249.1%13.5%59.4%TMCTMCHarischandrapurMalda31,12343.0%12.2%56.2%TMCTMCSutiMurshidabad27,36251.6%10.3%62.0%TMCTMCManikchakMalda25,75061.6%10.1%42.4%BJPTMCMothabariMalda24,40557.6%12.0%60.2%TMCTMCNine of the ten seats here have a distinct demographic; the minority population is above 50%. Six of the ten are border constituencies. Nine of the ten returned TMC candidates in this year’s assembly election, and all ten had elected TMC MLAs in 2021.Against the judges’ own verdictsJudicial officers have marked 27,16,393 voters as not eligible, that is 45% of the 60.07 lakh placed under adjudication. The Commission’s appeals add another 14.76 lakh, more than half as many again. If every appeal succeeded, 41.92 lakh people, that is nearly 70% of everyone placed under adjudication, would lose their place on the roll.In some seats, the Commission is now seeking to remove more voters than the judges did. That is true in 83 constituencies, and in all of Malda. Judges there marked 2,39,375 voters as not eligible. The Commission has appealed against 3,03,896 of those they cleared. If the appeals succeed, the share of Malda’s adjudicated voters who are removed would rise from 29% to 66%.SeatUnder adjudicationMarked not eligible by judgesECI appeals against those clearedShare removed if appeals succeedSujapur1,34,52126,829 (20%)61,03665%Ratua1,04,49035,573 (34%)37,80870%Chanchal73,9014,170 (6%)34,95853%Raghunathganj1,15,08746,100 (40%)33,85569%Chakulia74,64713,778 (18%)32,56862%Malatipur94,75029,489 (31%)32,02265%Harischandrapur91,97819,582 (21%)31,12355%Suti1,04,98037,965 (36%)27,36262%Manikchak65,50423,726 (36%)25,75076%Mothabari79,68337,255 (47%)24,40577%Chanchal shows a startling gap between what judges decided and the Commission’s appeal for exclusion. Judges examined 73,901 voters there and found only 4,170 ineligible. The Commission has appealed against 34,958 of the rest, more than eight times as many as the judges removed.The pattern follows the Commission’s near-uniform appeal rate. Where judges cleared the most people, the appeals are largest. Judges deleted a smaller share of adjudicated voters, 38%, in Muslim-majority seats, than in seats where minorities are under 10%, where the share of the deletions was much higher, at 62%. But the Election Commission’s appeals narrow that difference.So who bears the burden?Measured against the entire electorate, the appeals have been made overwhelmingly in Muslim-majority constituencies. In the 41 seats where minorities make up more than half the population, appeals against inclusion amount to 5.9% of the draft roll. In the 89 seats where minorities are under 10%, the figure is 0.6%.Those 41 seats alone hold 40.6% of all the appeals in the state.Minority share of the seatSeatsAppealsShare of all appealsAppeals as share of draft rollShare of cleared voters appealedUnder 10%891,27,0448.6%0.6%47.8%10% to 20%712,16,42814.7%1.3%46.3%20% to 30%512,42,01616.4%1.9%49.3%30% to 50%392,73,64818.5%2.9%47.8%Over 50%415,99,15540.6%5.9%51.0%The political picture follows the same lines. The 80 seats TMC won in 2026 hold 52.6% of all appeals, though they contain just over a quarter of the state’s voters. In those seats, appeals equal 4% of the draft roll, against 1.3% in the 207 seats the BJP won. Seats that elected TMC MLAs in 2021 hold 84.4% of the appeals.The numbers are large enough to matter in future contests. In 29 constituencies, appeals against inclusion outnumber the winning margin in the 2026 Assembly election. Fifteen of those seats were won by the BJP, 13 by TMC and one by the Congress. In Sujapur, the Commission’s 61,036 appeals exceed the TMC’s winning margin of 60,287. Municipal elections are expected to be announced next month.A series on how the adjudication process of the Special Intensive Revision in West Bengal continues in Bengal unfurls this truth. Read part one, here, part two, here, and part three, here, part four, here, and part five, here.Barely heardWell after six months into the results of the last Assembly polls, very few of these appeals have been decided. The tribunals have disposed of only 80,091, or 5.4% of the total, though the records do not show which way those cases went. Progress is slowest where the pile is biggest. In Malda, the tribunals have decided a paltry 938 of 3,03,896 appeals. In Murshidabad the figure is merely 145 out of 2,07,495, and in North 24 Parganas, 33 out of 1,18,049. In Bankura and Purulia, where the numbers are small, about three in four have already been decided.Since 21 September, no tribunal has been able to upload any order, after judges refused an ECI portal requirement to log in with their Aadhaar credentials.Why this mattersFor each of the 14.76 lakh voters that the Election Commission has appealed to have them knocked off, an appeal means defending their place on the roll a second time, after judges have already examined their documents and found them eligible. The tribunals sit in Kolkata. They are hearing these appeals in addition to those filed by about 22 lakh voters who were struck off in adjudication and want to be reinstated!At a Supreme Court hearing on August 25, Justice Joymalya Bagchi reportedly said that appeals against exclusion should be prioritised, since deletion amounts to “denuding a voting right”, while challenges to inclusion have other remedies under the law.The Commission has not said on what grounds it is challenging these voters, who decided to file the appeals, or whether each case was individually reviewed before an appeal was filed.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.