Supreme Court asks for special tribunals to hear appeals of voters excluded in West Bengal SIR

The Supreme Court of India on Tuesday (March 10, 2026) directed the constitution of special tribunals to decide on appeals against exclusions from the electoral roll during the West Bengal Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant ordered the formation of the tribunals after reasoning that the decisions of judicial officers deployed in the SIR exercise as Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) should not be subjected to appeal before any executive or administrative authority.

The Supreme Court asked the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court to request former Chief Justices and judges of High Courts to preside over the Benches of the appellate tribunals once they are notified by the Election Commission of India (ECI). The EC shall pay the retired judges an honorarium and cover the entire expenses of the tribunals.

The top court briefly recorded the contents of a communication received from the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court that over 500 judicial officers from West Bengal and over 200 judicial officers from the neighbouring States of Odisha and Jharkhand were working “day and night, even on Sundays and holidays” to hear objections and claims from voters excluded from the electoral roll.

The Calcutta Chief Justice, the top court recorded, said that 10.16 lakh objections have been disposed of as of March 9, 2026.

Supplementary list

The Bench further directed the EC to append the supplementary lists containing the names of voters cleared by the judicial officers to the final list published on February 28. These supplementary lists would be deemed to have been in existence from the date of release of the final voter list.

The court noted that the publication of supplementary list should be imminent considering the fact that the judicial officers, acting as EROs, have already disposed of over 10 lakh objections.

The court added that the reasons for exclusion should be immediately communicated to the electors concerned in order to facilitate the appellate process without delay.

On February 20, the top court had taken an “extraordinary” decision to involve the judiciary in the SIR in West Bengal, saying the persistent “trust deficit” between the Mamata Banerjee government and the EC had led to a “stalemate”, with time running out.

Four days later, the court had allowed more judicial officers to be deployed, even alerting the neighbouring States of Odisha and Jharkhand to spare their judges.

The Calcutta High Court Chief Justice had at the time found over 50 lakh claims and objections raised by voters excluded on grounds of logical discrepancies and mapping pending before the Electoral Registration Officers/Assistant Election Registration Officers (EROs/AEROs).

The court had requested the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court to deploy a force of serving and retired judicial officers of “impeccable integrity” in West Bengal to take over the quasi-judicial task of EROs/AEROs.

They were assigned to hear lakhs of voters who had found themselves purged from the West Bengal draft roll, and received hearing notices after the EC found them “unmapped” or detected “logical discrepancies” in their personal details. These discrepancies had included variations in the spelling of names, age-gaps between inter-generational family members, and the number of children.