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Kolkata: The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of West Bengal’s electoral roll marked “27,16,393 people as not eligible” in the Supreme Court-mandated judicial review. Every one of those names was struck off the roll and published in a list of deleted electors.

In March 2026, the Supreme Court directed the Commission to set up Appellate Tribunals so that anyone struck off could appeal and ask to be put back on the voter list.

The Election Commission says 75,443 of the 27,16,393 (or 2.78%) electors struck off West Bengal’s roll have been put back by the Appellate Tribunals. The figure comes from a 28-page Right to Information reply issued on August 17 to Isha Khan Choudhury, the Congress MP for Dakshin Malda.

Read closely, the reply does not support that figure. Nor does it support several other data points provided in the same 28 pages. The Wire raises the many questions raised by the Election Commission’s own data.

1. One word is being used to mean two opposite things

The tribunals in West Bengal were expected to decide on the restoration of electors who lost their voting rights after being marked “not eligible” during the SIR. The ECI, though, says it has received two kinds of appeals: (1) Inclusion requests, from those struck off the lists; and (2) Exclusion requests, demands from people to delete some names of those on the list.

The first is someone defending their own vote. The second is an individual or an authority seeking to end somebody else’s right to vote.

The Commission has added both together and published one number. Its own footnote to the table says so, recording that the total covers appeals against exclusion from the roll and objections against inclusion in it. Nowhere in the 28 pages of the RTI reply are separate figures given for either.

The same obfuscation is clear when looking at electors who have been........

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