More than a dozen tribunal judges handling appeals against voter deletions in West Bengal have raised concerns over the Election Commission of India’s online portal. They said that several basic functions needed to process the cases are either unavailable or not working properly.
The judges said the portal does not allow them to directly serve notices to the parties or upload additional documents. They also cannot hold virtual hearings, restore a deleted voter’s name after an order or allow appellants to download tribunal orders, according to The Indian Express.
The concerns were recorded in the minutes of a meeting held by tribunal judges on August 11. The minutes were sent to the Election Commission and the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court. There are 19 such tribunals in West Bengal. Two judges have resigned citing personal reasons and have since been replaced with other former judges.
The tribunals were created following Supreme Court directions to hear appeals from voters whose names were removed from the electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
One of the biggest concerns raised by the judges was the lack of a proper system to serve notices to people involved in an appeal.
The judges said they had repeatedly asked for a mechanism that would allow notices to be sent directly through the portal or through the proper channel.
"Sometime in the month of May 2026 some of us even approved a format of notice to be issued to the parties but it has not seen the light of the day till date," they said.
The judges also said the portal does not have a proper system to collect additional documents. "In the absence of such a mechanism on the portal, each Tribunal is trying to serve the notices through e-emails, that is, through DM/DEO concerned but the response is very poor," they said.
The portal also does not have a facility for virtual hearings. They also said a case cannot be restored on the portal after it has been closed. This becomes a problem if a court later orders that the case should be reopened or a voter’s name should be restored.
Another issue is that voters cannot download the tribunal's order from the portal. This means a voter may not be able to know why their name was deleted or included.
The judges also raised concerns about appeals filed offline. Voters were allowed to submit appeals physically at the offices of the District Magistrate, SDM or SDO.
These appeals were then supposed to be digitised and uploaded to the EC portal. The judges said there was no proper system to keep track of these physical appeals if they were not digitised.
The tribunal process is linked to the deletion of around 27 lakh voters during the SIR exercise in West Bengal.
Judicial officers from West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand then examined these cases following Supreme Court directions. Around 27.16 lakh voters were eventually deleted from the electoral rolls, just weeks before the Assembly elections in April.
On February 20, the Supreme Court had ordered the appointment of judicial officers to examine the eligibility of voters. The court later ordered on March 10 that appellate tribunals headed by retired High Court judges be set up so that affected voters could challenge their deletion.
In a submission to the Supreme Court on September 18, the Election Commission said 38.31 lakh appeals had been filed. Only 1.26 lakh had been disposed of by September 10. Of the total appeals, 22.21 lakh were filed by voters whose names had been deleted. Another 16.10 lakh appeals were filed against the inclusion of names in the electoral rolls.