West Bengal to Hold Bypolls in Two Seats With Incomplete Voter Lists

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has registered 18,895 appeals from Nandigram and Rejinagar, but only 86 appeals in Nandigram and four in Rejinagar have been decided. On September 28, the Supreme Court refused to urgently hear a case related to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal ahead of the Nandigram and Rejinagar by-elections. Chief Justice of India Surya Kant observed, “These are only by-elections, nothing more.”

Voting in the two constituencies will be held tomorrow, October 6. According to the Election Commission’s own data, a total of 18,895 appeals were filed from the two constituencies. The Appellate Tribunal’s list No. 3, updated through October 5, shows that only 90 cases have been decided, giving a disposal rate of just 0.476%. Of these, 86 were from Nandigram and four from Rejinagar.

Rejinagar: 4 decisions out of 12,452 appeals

Rejinagar in Murshidabad district has a Muslim population of 62.46%. During the SIR process, 19,800 voters from the constituency were referred to judicial officers. Of them, 15,877 were approved as valid and 3,923 were marked as “ineligible”. Among those marked ineligible, 3,752, or 95.6%, were Muslims.

According to the Election Commission’s September 10 report submitted to the Supreme Court, 12,452 appeals were filed in Rejinagar. Only four have been decided. This represents a disposal rate of 0.032%, compared with 3.201% across West Bengal. The tribunal in Rejinagar is therefore working at almost one-hundredth of the pace of the state average.

Since the tribunal began work on April 13, only four decisions have been issued in 175 days. This means one case has been decided every 44 days. At this pace, the remaining 12,448 appeals would take around 1,490 years to dispose of.

Nandigram: 86 decisions out of 6,443 appeals

Although Nandigram has a different demographic profile, it faces a similar procedural problem. Muslims make up 23.02% of the population of this East Midnapore constituency. During the SIR process, 10,616 voters were referred for review. Judicial officers approved 7,154 and declared 3,461 “ineligible”. Of those declared ineligible, 3,270, or 94.5%, were Muslims, although Muslims account for less than one-fourth of the constituency’s population.

According to the Election Commission’s September 10 data, Nandigram had 6,443 appeals. This is nearly twice the number of people who were excluded from voting in the Assembly election because of the judicial review. Of these appeals, 86 have been decided, giving a disposal rate of 1.381%. The remaining 6,354 cases are still pending.

85 voters validated for a second time

The small number of decisions in Nandigram does not provide the full picture. The voters awaiting decisions can broadly be divided into two groups: those who were declared ineligible and those whose names were included in the voter list but later faced appeals seeking their removal.

According to the list, the 86 decisions in Nandigram do not mean that excluded voters have been restored. In fact, 85 of the decisions involved rejecting appeals against voters who had already been declared valid by judicial officers. Only one voter was newly restored to the electoral roll.

Rejinagar shows the opposite picture. All four decisions there have restored the names of excluded voters, while no appeal against the inclusion of a voter’s name has yet been decided. Every voter newly included or retained through these decisions in the two constituencies is Muslim. In Nandigram, this means 85 Muslim voters have had to prove their eligibility twice—first before judicial officers and then before the tribunal.

177 voters were still waiting despite winning their cases

There is another layer to the incomplete adjudication process. After the voter lists were finalised in April, 256 cases in Nandigram and five in Rejinagar remained “pending”. By August 7, only one case in Nandigram was still awaiting a judicial decision. The other cases had been decided but remained pending because they were awaiting electronic signatures from election authorities. Among them were 177 Nandigram voters whom judicial officers had ruled eligible.

The Election Commission has not clarified whether those electronic signatures were subsequently provided or whether the names of those 177 voters were added to the electoral roll before the by-election. In Rejinagar, five voters remained under adjudication. The list of excluded voters required for filing appeals was also not made available to the public.

BJP’s “target” and the winning margin

The electoral outcome in Nandigram is highly sensitive to relatively small changes. In May, Chief Minister Shubhendu Adhikari won the constituency by 9,665 votes. He received 127,301 votes, while Trinamool Congress candidate Pabitra Kar received 117,636. The 3,461 voters declared ineligible were equivalent to about 36% of the winning margin.

Although these figures do not indicate how those voters would have voted, they show the potential significance of the unresolved voter list compared with the margin of victory. Adhikari had set the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a “target” of exceeding the record 1.09 lakh winning margin recorded in the Falta by-election. BJP candidate Hasirani Rath has said the margin should be increased further to 1.50 lakh.

The scale of such a margin becomes clear from the election figures. Nandigram had 266,415 registered voters. In the May election, 252,722 votes were cast, representing about 94.9% of registered voters. According to the Election Commission’s official results, the BJP received 50.37% of the vote, while the Trinamool Congress received 46.55%.

If the same number of votes were cast, a candidate would need around 176,361 votes to win by 100,000 votes. That would leave all other candidates combined with only 76,361 votes. This means the winning candidate would need nearly 70% of all votes cast, compared with the BJP’s 50.37% in May. Even with 100% turnout, around 69% of all registered voters would have to vote for the winning candidate to produce a 100,000-vote margin.

A comparison can be drawn with the 2024 general election. Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee won the Diamond Harbour seat with 68.48% of the vote, a result the BJP publicly described as a major instance of electoral manipulation. The margin Adhikari is now describing as a target would require an even higher vote share than the result his own party had called manipulated.

What “only a by-election” means

The by-elections in these two constituencies will be the first electoral test of a voter list that the Election Commission has not been able to fully adjudicate. They are also being held in two constituencies where the commission has disposed of the fewest cases.

In Nandigram, the Congress candidate spent 11 of the 16 days of his campaign in custody because of warrants linked to the 2007 movement. The day after his release, two of his associates were arrested. The Communist Party of India candidate was also attacked during the campaign. The Trinamool Congress candidate withdrew his candidature after meeting the chief minister.

In Rejinagar, the Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AUJP) stopped campaigning after its supported candidate was arrested. The Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) withdrew after it was denied an election symbol. The Indian Secular Front (ISF), meanwhile, is contesting under the “Almari” symbol. The “Envelope” symbol it used in 2024 and in April was allotted to the Democratic Trinamool Congress, a party led by Ritabrata Banerjee after his departure from the Trinamool Congress.