19,000 Voters to Miss West Bengal Bypolls as Tribunal Backlog Drags On
Nearly 19,000 voters in West Bengal's Nandigram and Rejinagar Assembly constituencies will be unable to cast their votes in the byelections being held on Tuesday (October 6, 2026), because their appeals remain pending before the State's Appellate Tribunals.
These voters are among the 38.31 lakh people in West Bengal who are still off the electoral rolls owing to the slow pace of work at the tribunals. The Calcutta High Court observed in July that at the current rate, clearing the pending cases would take 21 years.
Figures from the two constituencies indicate the scale of the backlog. In Rejinagar, 12,452 appeals have been filed, of which four have been allowed so far. In Nandigram, 6,443 appeals were submitted, of which 89 have been included. In neither constituency has anyone been excluded through this process. Across the State, the tribunals have disposed of only about 1.26 lakh of the 38.31 lakh appeals, which is roughly 3% of the total.
Tribunals short-staffed
Of the 19 Appellate Tribunals set up by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in March, only 16 are functional. Three retired judges — Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, Justice Ranjit Bag and Justice Indrajit Chatterjee — have resigned, citing functional difficulties. Their posts remain vacant.
A proposal by the ECI to raise the number of tribunals from 19 to 42 has also not moved forward. The Supreme Court was scheduled to hear the matter on Monday (October 5), but the case was not listed.
The ECI's special door-to-door drive to re-enrol voters left out during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), announced last week, will not apply to those whose appeals are pending. That drive uses Form 6, which is meant for fresh enrolment.
How the tribunals came about
The Appellate Tribunals were set up following the Supreme Court's supervision of the SIR process. Judicial officers, drawn from a list the Calcutta High Court submitted at the Supreme Court's direction, were asked to adjudicate roughly 60 lakh "doubtful and pending" cases. On March 10, the Supreme Court directed that a separate appellate body be constituted so that people could challenge those officers' decisions.
Of the approximately 60 lakh doubtful cases, about 700 judicial officers cleared and restored 32.77 lakh (32,77,360) voters to the rolls. The remaining 27.23 lakh were rejected, and of them, 22 lakh appealed to the tribunals.
The ECI constituted the Appellate Tribunals for West Bengal on March 21, and they began functioning around April 13. On April 16, the Supreme Court ordered that voters whose appeals succeed be added to the rolls through a supplementary list. That order came only days before the Assembly elections began on April 23, by which time only 136 names had reportedly been cleared.
The pending cases fall into two broad categories: individual voters who were rejected during the SIR and challenged that decision, and bulk objections to the inclusion of voters restored by the judicial officers. In all, 16,10,311 bulk appeals were filed at the tribunals against such inclusions. Together with individual appeals, the total pending before the tribunals stands at a little more than 38 lakh.
Voting in the Nandigram and Rejinagar byelections is under way, but those whose appeals remain unresolved cannot take part. Their cases now depend on the pace of work at the tribunals and on further directions from the Supreme Court.
