Kolkata: When the deadline for disposing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) cases passed on the night of February 21, West Bengal’s Electoral Registration Officers (ERO) had decided almost every case before them.As per the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and recent Supreme Court directives, EROs are the final authority on who gets included in voter lists or excluded from them. The EROs had cleared 5,55,42,439 (over 5.5 crore) voters for their names to be published in the voter list, leaving only 73,637 voters marked for document review.These 73,637 voters are the only ones who should have been asked to disprove flags against their names, either of “logical discrepancy” or of being in the “unmapped” category.Yet, a week after the EROs had cleared all these voters, 60 lakh names were handed to the 700-odd judges appointed in the state to decide cases sent for document review. These judges were appointed only in West Bengal as a result of a Supreme Court intervention. They were meant to do the initial verification hearings for flagged voters.Also read: The Logical Discrepancy that Falsifies the Entire Democratic SystemThe Election Commission’s own statewide Notice and Hearing Report shows these 60 lakh referrals to these judges. The report, dated February 22, seen by The Wire, records, district by district, where every hearing case stood at the close of the February 21 deadline. By this date, document scrutiny and formal disposal of all claims and objections were to be completed, so that the final rolls could be published on February 28.The Wire earlier reported how voters whose cases had already been decided by EROs were moved into adjudication. That report relied on the status reports recorded on ERONET, the ECI’s internal portal for officials. It also related to voters in just two districts, Murshidabad and Nadia. The EC’s report, dated February 22, covers all 24 districts in Bengal.The state at the deadlineAcross the state, notices had been issued in 1,51,92,634 (over 1.51 crore) hearing cases. EROs and their assistants had cleared 1,31,45,109 (over 1.31 crore) of them, or 86.5%, for publication in the final roll. It had found only 11,58,636, or 7.6% of the voters, ineligible.That left about 8,88,889 (8.9 lakh) cases, 5.9%, undecided.Those figures match what an Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) told The Wire earlier: that about 95% of cases had been disposed of by the deadline and about 5% were left pending.However, when the final roll was published on February 28, 60,06,675 (more than 60 lakh) voters were found marked as “under adjudication”. That is almost seven times the number that EROs had left undecided.At least 51 lakh of the voters sent to the judges had, as per the EC’s own record, already been decided by an ERO. In other words, 51 lakh voters had already been cleared for inclusion, which left roughly 9 lakh voters whose cases had not been determined by the EROs.Observers flagged, EROs overruledAs per the ECI report, it is the Electoral Roll Micro Observers or ERMOs, who marked 31,43,868 (over 31.4 lakh) cases as “documents need to be reviewed”. The roll observers above them, at a higher rank than ERMOs, marked another 40,28,055 (more than 40 lakh) voters.Some voters were flagged by both ERMOs and their superiors, so the two figures cannot simply be added. However, between them, the observers flagged cases on a scale several times larger than the number EROs had left undecided – which was under 9 lakh cases.Where EROs acted on those flags, they overwhelmingly disagreed with the observers. They disagreed with ERMOs in 16,09,077 (around 16 lakh) cases and agreed in 1,29,289 (just about 1.3 lakh) cases. They disagreed with roll observers in 19,83,215 (19.8 lakh) cases and agreed in 73,637 cases.In all, EROs overruled the observers in 35,92,292 (close to 36 lakh) cases and accepted their view in 2,02,926 (around 2 lakh), about 95% against 5%.Under the Representation of the People Act, it is the ERO’s decision that counts. The Supreme Court’s order of February 9 said that “the final decision will be taken by the EROs only”.Where the judges’ cases came fromIn every major district, far more voters went to judges than EROs had left undecided.In Malda, EROs had left 8,730 cases undecided. A week later, 8,28,127 (8.2 lakh) voters were under adjudication, 95 times as many. Observers had flagged 8,72,471 (8.7 lakh) cases in the district, close to the number that went to judges.In Murshidabad, only 12,194 cases were undecided by EROs, but 11,01,145 (just over 11 lakh) voters were sent to judges – the observers had flagged 11,21,205 (11.2 lakh cases).Across all 24 districts of West Bengal, the number of voters placed under adjudication rises and falls with the number of observer flags, almost in step, with a correlation of 0.95.However, the number of cases observers flagged bears little relation to the number of cases EROs had left undecided (a correlation of 0.26). The roll observers’ flags alone track it even more closely, at 0.97.The district figures cannot show which individual voters went to judges. But they are consistent with what the AERO told The Wire, that the voters placed under adjudication were those the observers had sent for review, including those EROs had approved a second time.Uttar Dinajpur is one district where the number under adjudication, 4,80,341 (over 4.8 lakh), exceeds the number of observer flags, 2,75,074 (around 2.75 lakh).One boothA booth-level officer in Satgachhia, in South 24 Parganas, shared a photograph of the ERO’s final publication screen for a polling station, taken at 10:14 pm on February 21, less than two hours before the deadline. It lists six voters still awaiting a decision. Every one of them carries the micro-observer’s note “Document to be reviewed”, and only one has also been flagged by the roll observer.Also read: Did 27 Lakhs Lose the Right to Vote Because the EC Software Switched Bengal Voters Already Decided by EROs Over to Judges Overnight?In the final roll published a week later, 120 voters were under adjudication from the part – all of them Muslims. Judicial officers went on to delete 93 of these names from the voter list.Across Satgachhia, 17,650 voters were placed under adjudication, and judges deleted 8,785 of them. In April, the BJP won the seat from the Trinamool Congress by 401 votes.What the report contradictsOn March 1, the West Bengal CEO’s office said that names had been marked under adjudication “since the concerned EROs/AEROs did not decide them after hearing”. The commission’s own deadline report shows that EROs had left only about 8.9 lakh cases undecided, against 60 lakh sent to judges.Subrata Gupta, the ECI’s special roll observer for the SIR, told The Wire that the commission had informed observers that of about 1.5 crore cases heard, about 90 lakh had been disposed of and 60 lakh were pending. The statewide report shows 1.52 crore hearing cases, of which EROs had decided about 1.43 crore.In its counter-affidavit in the Supreme Court on October 26, the ECI stated that the ERO “remains the statutory authority for inclusion, correction and deletion”, and that “no entry is added or deleted or modified except by order of the Electoral Registration Officer”. On the commission’s own record, EROs had overruled the observers in 35.9 lakh cases.The Wire has sent the CEO, West Bengal, queries about who decided that cases EROs had already decided would go to judges, how the list of 60 lakh was drawn up and why EROs’ disagreement with the observers in 35.9 lakh cases was not treated as final. This story will be updated once a response is received.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.