Kamal Ghorui
Kolkata: Just 72 hours to go from Saturday to Supreme Court’s deadline for adding voters cleared by SIR tribunals, and Election Commission has yet to publish the name of a single person whose voting right has been reinstated and who can participate in the first phase of the Bengal assembly polls on April 23. More than 27 lakh people were excluded from the voters’ list after judicial adjudication, which was the last stage of SIR of electoral rolls that began in Nov 2025. Their fate as electors now depends on the verdict of 19 appellate tribunals set up on SC’s order.The SC has ruled deleted voters from the constituencies going to the polls in the first phase can exercise their franchise in the upcoming elections if their appeals are cleared by April 21. The deadline for the second phase, scheduled for April 29, is April 27. According to an EC source, the tribunals started work on April 13 and disposed of close to 200 cases by Thursday. But Bengal’s chief electoral officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal said he has no information on how many cases have been disposed of so far or how many have been approved. “The tribunal’s functioning is totally independent of EC and CEO’s office. Until the dashboard is ready, I cannot say how many cases have been disposed of by the tribunals. The EC is trying its best to launch the dashboard as soon as possible,” he said. All 19 tribunals, each headed by a retired judge, are functioning from an institute in Kolkata’s Joka. The retired judges arrive at 10am and work till 5-6pm. “Cases are being disposed of regularly. While some logistical and infrastructural hitches remain, work is going on,” said a retired Calcutta high court judge who heads one of the tribunals. Asked how to access the tribunals’ orders, he said: “Keep an eye on the EC website.” To questions about how the appellants will know whether their names have been cleared, Agarwal said: “Voters will be informed of the decision through their BLOs. There are other means as well.
