New Delhi/Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) informed the Supreme Court on Monday that the victory margins in thirty-one constituencies during the recent West Bengal Assembly elections were significantly lower than the number of votes removed during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). Representing the party before a bench comprising Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi, senior advocate and MP Kalyan Banerjee argued that these mass deletions directly influenced the electoral outcomes in those specific areas. In response to these claims, the bench indicated that former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and other senior leaders are permitted to file a fresh petition specifically challenging the implementation and impact of the SIR across the state.
The TMC’s legal team highlighted a specific instance where their candidate lost by a mere 862 votes, while more than five thousand voters had been struck from the electoral rolls in that same constituency. While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) maintained a substantial overall lead of approximately thirty-two lakh votes across the province, the TMC pointed out that thirty-five appeals against vote deletions remain pending. The Election Commission of India (EC) countered these claims during the hearing, asserting that any disputes regarding the SIR process should be addressed through formal petitions filed directly with the commission rather than through judicial intervention at this stage.
The scale of the voter list revision has become a focal point of the post-election legal battle, with data showing that roughly ninety-one lakh names were removed statewide, averaging thirty thousand deletions per seat. Out of the 293 contested seats, 176 were decided by a margin of fewer than thirty thousand votes. Of these narrow-margin victories, the BJP secured 128 seats, while the TMC won 44. The TMC argued that in twenty-five of the BJP’s winning seats, the number of disqualified or removed voters exceeded the actual margin of victory, suggesting that the results could have been altered had those voters remained on the list.
Senior advocate Menaka Guruswamy, also representing the TMC, expressed concern over the pace of the legal process, noting that current appellate tribunals might take up to four years to resolve the pending appeals at their existing rate. The court had previously established a principle that it would only intervene in cases where the number of removed votes was demonstrably higher than the victory margin, as smaller discrepancies would not have a material impact on the final result. As the BJP holds its majority with 207 seats against the TMC’s 80, the judicial scrutiny of the voter rolls remains a significant point of contention for the state’s political future.
