Will hear Trinamool pleas on victory margins being less than deleted votes in SIR, says Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Monday (May 11, 2026) assured Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee that it will examine her allegations that thousands of deletions made during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls “materially affected” the recently concluded Assembly elections in West Bengal.

This is the first Supreme Court hearing after the elections in the West Bengal SIR case, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party defeated the Trinamool to come to power for the first time. While the BJP won 207 seats in the 294-seat Assembly, Trinamool won 80 seats. The state recorded a record voter turnout of over 90% in the elections.

Appearing before Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi, senior advocate Kalyan Bandhopadhyay, representing the former Prime Minister and other party leaders, said the margins of victory for the BJP in as many as 31 seats were less than the number of votes deleted during the SIR.

“I have prepared a table. I just want to give an impression of what I said. In one seat, the difference was 862 and 5,432 votes were being decided in appeals before the courts. His Lordship had said that in case of such a situation, we can approach this court,” Bandhopadhyay said.

As of May 11, voters had filed over 34 lakh appeals in 19 Courts of Appeal against their removal from the electoral roll due to “logical inconsistencies” in their personal information. “Logical inconsistency” as a category of exclusion from the electoral roll was specific to West Bengal.

The courts were able to decide only a few thousand challenges in time for voting in the two-phase Assembly elections. Although the Supreme Court decided to establish these courts on March 11, they only became operational on April 13. In fact, the high court had ordered that even voters acquitted by the courts should be allowed to vote on April 21 and April 27 – two days before the first and second voting phases. However, a significant number of appeals remained unresolved or even heard.

Addressing Mr. Bandhopadhyay, Justice Bagchi said, “On the grounds that the results have been materially affected due to the deletions under the order, we request you to file an application for the matter to be taken up by us.”

Menaka Guruswamy, also senior advocate for Trinamool leaders, said “there is a feeling that the pending appeals will take four or more years to be decided”.

Mr. Bandhopadhyay pointed out that Justice TS Sivagnanam, former Chief Judge of the Calcutta High Court, who was one of the most prominent judges appointed to the courts, had resigned. It reportedly accepted 1,777 SIR objections before submitting its documents.

“What can we do if a former Chief Justice wants to leave?” Chief Justice Kant reacted.

Justice Bagchi said the apex court will seek information from the Chief Judge of the Calcutta High Court about the appeals pending before the courts.

“We will seek a report from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court regarding the pending appeals. We will then consider how and when the appeals can be resolved,” Justice Bagchi said.

Chief Justice Kant said the focus now was on improving the mechanism for appellate decisions.

Dama Seshadri Naidu, senior advocate for the Election Commission, said Trinamool leaders can challenge the results through election petitions or approach the Supreme Court alleging limitation if they have SIR-related grievances, in which case the Election Commission reserves the right to respond.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court gave two months to the National Investigation Agency to complete its investigation into the case of seven judicial officers deployed for SIR work and gheraoed in Malda on April 1 ahead of the elections.