SIR 2.0 | TMC MP Derek O’Brien moves Supreme Court over deletion of 58 lakh voter names in West Bengal

New Delhi: TMC MP Deriek O'Brien has approached the Supreme Court, claiming with the Election Commission's SIR exercise in West Bengal, 58,20,898 names were deleted from the electoral rolls, without any notice or personal hearing.

His plea urged the apex court to issue a direction to the EC to extend the deadline for submitting claims and objections currently fixed as January 15, 2026, and also direct the poll body to forthwith stop issuing instructions for compliance by the BLOs and other officers in the SIR exercise through WhatsApp or other such informal channels and declare all such instructions issued so far as illegal.

The plea contended that the poll body has acted outside the law and followed arbitrary procedures during the SIR exercise.

"The EC cannot act arbitrarily, capriciously or dehors law, nor can it substitute legally prescribed and set procedures with ad hoc or informal mechanisms," the plea said.

The plea said, "The draft electoral roll was published in West Bengal on December 16, 2025, and 58,20,898 names were deleted, without any notice or personal hearing."

It claimed, there has been a precipitous decline from 7,66,37,529 voters after the special summary revision of 2025 to 7,08,16,616 voters on the draft electoral roll.

"This action of the EC is contrary to its own detailed SOP for deletion of entries from the electoral roll issued in writing on 11.08.2023," it said.

The plea stated that final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on February 14, 2026 (after closure of notice and hearing phase on February 07, 2026) and the applicant reasonably apprehended that elections to the legislative assembly of West Bengal will be immediately declared thereafter.

"This is the final act of injustice as it will practically freeze the voters list with whatever errors and omissions are caused due to the hasty and illegal actions of the EC. This will effectively render nugatory all appeals and corrective processes for restoration of wrongly and unjustly disenfranchised voters, which as it is, will also take reasonable time," the plea contended.

The applicant was also aggrieved with the poll body issuing critical instructions to field officers through WhatsApp or orally, and not through proper written notifications, circular or order.