In 7,335 polling booths spread across 23 districts of West Bengal, every voter cleared by judicial officers during the controversial logical discrepancy phase of the special intensive revision (SIR) earlier this year is facing an appeal against their inclusion in the electoral roll, a new report has found.
It wasn’t clear how many of the disposed appeals were successful. The developments bring focus back to the controversial logical discrepancy process in West Bengal, the first state where it was implemented. But another six million people were flagged under logical discrepancy and faced the prospect of being struck off over name mismatches, typos, age gaps between parents and applicants, and number of children.
These appeals – filed by the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office, according to the Election Commission of India (ECI) affidavit before the Supreme Court – are part of the 1.6 million appeals filed in total against the inclusion of people before judicial tribunals in the eastern state. These 7,335 booths held 27,277 voters who judicial officers cleared. Of these, 21,615 (79%) were pending and 5,662 were disposed of, according to the CRG analysis. All 294 assembly constituencies in the state had at least one such booth, the data showed. The state had 76.6 million electors before SIR. When the draft roll was released on December 16, 2025, it dropped 5.8 million voters and the roll shrank to 70.8 million. There are 19 appellate tribunals that are hearing both deleted voters appealing against their exclusion, and CEO officials appealing against the inclusion of certain voters. The 1.6 million appeals filed by election officials represent roughly half of the 3.28 million people cleared by judicial officers. Of these 1.6 million appeals by election officials, approximately 1.5 million are pending and 81,242 have been disposed of, according to data compiled by CRG from the tribunal’s appeal portal.
