Supreme Court Orders TMC to File Applications Over Voter Deletions

The Supreme Court of India directed the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) to file separate interlocutory applications to support claims that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls materially affected the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections. A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi ruled that the party must provide detailed constituency-wise records to examine the impact on electoral outcomes.

Representing the TMC, advocate Kalyan Banerjee argued that in 31 constituencies won by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the number of deleted voters exceeded the winning margins. In the Jangipara constituency, for example, the party lost by 862 votes while over 5,000 names were deleted. The TMC further alleged that approximately 35 lakh appeals against deletions remain pending, contributing to a victory for the BJP, which won 207 seats compared to the TMC's 80 seats in the 294-member assembly.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) opposed the petitions, asserting that challenges to election results must be pursued through election petitions by defeated candidates rather than writ petitions. The ECI noted it had deleted nearly 9 million voters, including 2.7 million under a logical discrepancy category. To resolve the backlog, the court suggested that appellate tribunals grant out-of-turn hearings for urgent cases and indicated it would seek a report from the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court to expedite the resolution of pending appeals.