Judges of Bengal tribunals ask Election Commission to fix portal, drop Aadhaar authentication

Appellate tribunals are bodies that review decisions being challenged on appeal. In this case, they were made up of retired High Court judges appointed to examine disputes arising from West Bengal’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Their role mattered because voters removed from the rolls needed a formal way to challenge those decisions before the Assembly elections.

The Supreme Court ordered the tribunals on March 20. The Election Commission appointed 19 former judges. They were expected to decide appeals filed by deleted voters and appeals against the inclusion of other electors. The tribunals were separate from the judicial officers who first examined cases flagged by the EC’s software.

The process has faced major delays. By September 18, 38.31 lakh appeals had been filed, but only 1.26 lakh had been disposed of by September 10. Judges also reported portal failures that prevented final orders from being uploaded.

The judges are asking for Aadhaar authentication to be removed because it has become a technical barrier to completing their work. The updated tribunal portal requires judges to authenticate with their private Aadhaar numbers before uploading a final order. Without that step, an order may be decided physically but cannot be entered into the system.

The judges’ venue-in-charge raised the issue in a September 24 letter to the Additional Chief Electoral Officer and the tribunal nodal officer. The request specifically sought removal of the Aadhaar screen for disposing of appeals. The same problem was reported again on October 13, after the CEO’s office forwarded an appellant’s request for disposal.

This leaves the tribunals with a split process. Judges can issue decisions on paper, but the portal does not record them as final. That can delay official processing, access to orders, and the proper functioning of the appeal system.

When judges issue orders physically but cannot upload them, the tribunal’s decision is not fully reflected in the official portal. The system currently blocks the final upload because of the Aadhaar authentication requirement. This matters because the portal is the Election Commission’s digital system for managing the appeals and their outcomes.

The problem was documented twice. On September 24, the tribunals’ venue-in-charge asked for the Aadhaar screen to be removed. On October 13, the tribunal told the CEO’s office that the system still did not allow final orders to be uploaded and requested that the issue be fixed. The judges had already been disposing of orders physically.

The immediate result is a gap between decisions made by judges and decisions recorded online. Appellants may not receive digital access to completed orders, while officials cannot rely on a fully updated system. The article does not state when the problem will be resolved.

West Bengal’s revision involved tens of lakhs of electors. The EC’s centralised software flagged 60.06 lakh electors for what it called “logical discrepancies.” Judicial officers later ordered 27.16 lakh of those electors removed from the rolls, only weeks before the Assembly elections in April.

The appeal stage also reached a huge scale. By September 18, the Election Commission told the Supreme Court that 38.31 lakh appeals had been filed. Of these, 22.21 lakh were filed by voters who had been deleted, while 16.10 lakh challenged inclusions on the electoral rolls.

Progress was much slower than the volume of cases. The EC said only 1.26 lakh appeals had been disposed of by September 10. The tribunal judges’ complaints about poor facilities and portal barriers therefore affect a process handling millions of appeals, not a small administrative backlog.

The Supreme Court required judicial involvement because it found a trust deficit between the Election Commission and West Bengal’s then Trinamool Congress-ruled state government. The court used its extraordinary powers under Article 142 and ordered judicial officers to adjudicate whether flagged electors were eligible to remain on the rolls.

Hundreds of judicial officers examined 60.06 lakh cases identified by the EC’s centralised software as having “logical discrepancies.” They ultimately ordered 27.16 lakh electors deleted. The court then ordered appellate tribunals of retired High Court judges on March 20, creating a separate review route for those affected.

This arrangement placed the initial decisions and appeals in the hands of judicial officers rather than leaving the entire process to the election administration. The EC appointed 19 former judges to the appellate tribunals. Their work was intended to give deleted voters an opportunity to challenge their removal before the elections.

The tribunal portal initially lacked several basic case-management functions. Judges said it could not serve notices to parties, upload additional documents from voters, conduct virtual hearings, restore a deleted voter, or allow appellants to download tribunal orders. These gaps made it difficult to manage appeals through one digital system.

The portal also restricted the documents judges could accept to the 13 documents listed by the Election Commission during the Special Intensive Revision. That limited the material appellants could submit, even when judges needed to examine additional records. The judges recorded these concerns at a meeting on August 11 and sent them to the EC and the Calcutta High Court.

The EC later updated the portal and held a virtual familiarisation meeting on September 21. However, judges were not told about the new private-Aadhaar authentication requirement. That later blocked final-order uploads, leaving the wider system only partly functional.

An electoral roll is the official list of electors for an area. It identifies the people recognised as eligible to vote in an election. Being included matters because a person generally needs to appear on this list to cast a ballot through the election process. This basic definition comes from established election practice; the article focuses on the disputes created by changing the list.

In West Bengal, the Election Commission’s software flagged 60.06 lakh electors for “logical discrepancies.” Judicial officers examined those cases and ordered 27.16 lakh electors deleted. The affected voters could then appeal to tribunals made up of retired High Court judges.

The scale made accurate records and functioning appeals especially important. By September 18, 22.21 lakh appeals had been filed by deleted voters, while another 16.10 lakh challenged inclusions. The article reports that portal failures were slowing the recording and completion of tribunal decisions.