Kolkata: For weeks, the question of who filed 16.10 lakh appeals against West Bengal voters cleared by judicial officers went unanswered, even inside the Election Commission. On October 26, the commission gave its answer to the Supreme Court.In a counter-affidavit in Rakesh Kumar Singh v. Union of India (2026), a petition drawing on the Indian Express’s reports of objections raised by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, Deputy Election Commissioner Bhanu Prakash Yeturu set out the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) position in paragraph 63:“As per provisions of the RP Act, the CEO/DEO/ERO/AERO are the authorities in respect of electoral rolls. It is submitted that a communication dt. 22.10.2026 has been received by the office of the ECI from the office of the CEO, West Bengal, stating 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. 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.”The ERO refers to the Electoral Registration Officer who prepares voter lists in a constituency and the CEO is the Chief Electoral Officer, who supervises election preparation at the state or Union Territory level. The DEO is a District Election Officer.Read against the claims made by the ECI in this affidavit, the court’s orders as well as the appeal records, the above explanation leaves five problems unresolved.1. The tribunals are not in the RP ActThe affidavit says the officers acted “in their capacity as authorities under the RP Act”, or the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which governs how elections are to be conducted in India. However, the appellate tribunals that the voters were told to appeal to do not exist under this Act. These tribunals were created by the Supreme Court, which ordered them set up on March 10. The ECI notified 19 of them on March 20, as paragraph 62 of the affidavit confirms. The RP Act’s own appeal route, under Section 24, runs from an ERO’s order to a district magistrate and then to the CEO.“The RP Act says nothing about any tribunal whatsoever,” said Prasenjit Bose, West Bengal Congress SIR committee chairperson. “Since the tribunals were created by the Supreme Court in April 2026, authority under the Act cannot extend to filing appeals before a body the Act does not provide for.”2. The court’s orders do not name these officersThe ECI rests the officers’ authority on two orders passed in Mostari Banu v. Election Commission of India, and quotes from both.The order of April 1, as quoted in paragraph 61 of the ECI affidavit, records an assurance from the commission’s own counsel:“Mr Naidu has informed us that it will be ensured that the Appellate Tribunals have access to the records submitted by the parties before the Judicial Officers, for deciding the appeals that may be filed (i) by persons whose names have been excluded from the Voters List; or (ii) by the authorities of the Election Commission of India, who may be aggrieved by the inclusion of names by the adjudicatory authorities.”The order of April 6, quoted in paragraph 62, refers back to it, saying the issue “could be raised…by such objectors/authorities of the ECI, who might be aggrieved by the inclusion of certain names in the voter list”.Neither passage mentions officers of the CEO’s office. The first is the court recording what the commission’s counsel told it about tribunals’ access to records. Neither examines who should file such appeals, or authorises any officer by name or designation.“The Supreme Court did not authorise officers of the office of the CEO to file any appeal before the Appellate Tribunals,” Bose observed.3. The affidavit does not say the statutory authorities filed themParagraph 63 of the affidavit again lists the CEO, DEO, EROs and AEROs as the authorities for electoral rolls. It then says the appeals were filed by “officers of the Office of the CEO”. It does not say that any of the listed authorities filed them, or name the officers who did.Elsewhere, the affidavit is clear about where the power over the electoral roll lies. The ERO “remains the statutory authority for inclusion, correction and deletion” under Sections 13B, 22 and 23 of the Act,” it says in paragraph 55, and “no entry is added or deleted or modified except by order of the Electoral Registration Officer”.“The only authorities vis-a-vis electoral rolls recognised under the RP Act are the “CEO/DEOs/EROs/AEROs” as the ECI itself says. Since the commission has not stated that the appeals against inclusions were filed by these authorised officials – CEO, DEOs, EROs or AEROs – it is evident that unauthorised persons have filed those appeals,” Bose said.Also read: Bengal Offers Deleted Voters a Way Back, Except the 22 Lakh Who Already Appealed to the TribunalsThe Wire has seen hearing notices issued by Justice (Retd.) Indrajit Chatterjee, sitting as Appellate Tribunal No. 11 for 10 assembly constituencies in the district of Murshidabad, in which it has been noted that the appeal was filed by the Additional CEO.4. Most appeals were lodged before the order that claims to authorise themAppeal records collected and verified by the Civic Research Group and analysed by The Wire show that more than 12 lakh of the appeals carry a single series code, marking one batch lodged on April 5. That was two days before the roll was frozen for the Assembly election, and a day before the Supreme Court’s April 6 order – the one in which the court itself spoke of “objectors/authorities of the ECI”.The structure of the IDs was decoded by civil rights activists and independently verified by The Wire.5. The commission’s own accounts of these voters gives no ground for challenging themIn paragraph 60, the ECI describes the voters it has appealed against. “The names of those electors are already in the Electoral Rolls and accordingly they have been entitled to exercise their voting right in the recent Assembly elections,” it says. “Their documents are available on the portal and there is a favourable order passed by the Ld. Judicial Officer in their favour,” it also says.But the affidavit does not state on what grounds these voters, by its own account eligible on the record, were challenged.Instead, the affidavit says the matters “were not brought to the commission”. Yet it was the commission’s own counsel who told the court on April 1 that its authorities would appeal against inclusions.In a file noting on August 12, according to the Indian Express, Sandhu said, “Who was authorised to file these appeals on behalf of ECI, and by whom?” What is more, the ECI’s special roll observer for the SIR, Subrata Gupta, has told The Wire he had “no information about these appeals being filed or having been filed”.The affidavit was approved for filing, the ECI says in paragraph 4, “by a unanimous decision of the three members of the Election Commission”, including Sandhu and Joshi.Bose has called for a judicial probe to identify the officers and “reveal their modus operandi”. He adds, “An audit is likely to reveal that these appeals were auto-generated from within the ECINET system, unlike the 22 lakh odd appeals which were filed by individual aggrieved electors”In Bose’s view, the appeals are “prima facie unauthorised and illegal and need to be quashed as soon as possible”. Whether they were generated within ECINET could be settled only by the portal’s own audit records.The Wire has written to the CEO, West Bengal asking which officers filed the appeals, on whose authority and on what grounds.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.