Rate at which West Bengal tribunals restoring names of deleted electors proves genuine voters not allowed to vote: Prasenjit Bose

Congress leader and social activist Prasenjit Bose on Wednesday, May 27, 2026, underlining the rate at which appellate courts are restoring voters’ names deleted during the Special Intensive Revision in West Bengal, said that this development proves how genuine voters were mistakenly deleted during the SIR in West Bengal.

“Appellate Tribunals were constituted by the Supreme Court to hear appeals, where nearly 25 lakh appeals against deletions were reported to be pending. Till May 14, 2026, 6,581 appeals were disposed of by the courts and the names of 4,043 voters (61%) were restored. This provides evidence of how genuine voters were deleted under SIR in a non-transparent, arbitrary and unfair manner. Discriminatory processes,” Mr. Bose said in an affidavit.

Prasenjit Bose serves as the chairman of the SIR Committee of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee and emphasized that with more than 60% of the voters being restored to the voters’ list by the courts, it is clear that the genuine voters have been deprived of their right to vote in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections.

These remarks came on the same day that the Supreme Court approved the SIR application in Bihar, saying that the application cannot be invalidated merely because it does not fully comply with the modalities.

Referring to the situation in Bihar, Mr. Bose said voters in Bihar whose names were mistakenly deleted on ASDD grounds were given the option to “challenge the Commission’s decision through judicial review”.

“The judicial forum within which aggrieved voters can file their objections/objections needs to be specified,” Mr. Bose said.

More than 27 lakh voters under jurisdiction were removed from West Bengal voter rolls on April 7, weeks before the Assembly elections in the state. A quarter of such deletions were reported in two Muslim-majority districts in the state. Besides the Trinamool Congress, other Opposition parties such as the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) had opposed the SIR, especially the deletion of 27 lakh voters who traced their inheritance connections to the 2022 voter rolls but were excluded from the voter rolls due to logical inconsistency. Many political observers attribute the deletion of SIR to the BJP’s massive victory in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly polls.