Senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has moved the Supreme Court through a public interest litigation (PIL), challenging what he described as the “arbitrary deletion” of nearly 2.7 million names from West Bengal's electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise conducted earlier this year.

The petition raises concerns over the consequences of the large-scale deletions, particularly for economically weaker sections of society.

“Due to the deletion of their names, many underprivileged citizens are being actively deprived of various essential social and government welfare benefits,” the plea stated.

Seeking urgent judicial intervention, Chowdhury's petition has also highlighted the severe shortage of judicial infrastructure to deal with the flood of cases arising out of the voter roll revision process.

It urged the apex court to direct the appointment of an “adequate” number of sitting or retired judges to handle the state's “extraordinary” caseload, which has reportedly increased following the retirement of former Calcutta High Court Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam from the SIR tribunal.

“It has become evident that with only 2 functional tribunals in Murshidabad handling just 30–50 cases a day, clearing the massive backlog will take 4 to 5 years!” the petition said.

The plea further alleged that nearly 500,000 voters in Murshidabad district alone had their names removed from the electoral rolls due to minor clerical errors and were denied “any opportunity for a fair hearing.”

Calling for systemic reforms, the Congress leader has sought the creation of block-wise appellate tribunals in districts that have been heavily impacted by the revision exercise, including Murshidabad and Malda.

The petition has also sought the establishment of a transparent digital portal where daily cause lists and copies of judicial orders can be accessed by the public.

The PIL comes amid continuing political and legal scrutiny over the SIR exercise in West Bengal, with opposition parties alleging that the revision process has led to the disenfranchisement of a large number of genuine voters.

According to the data made public on April 6, 27,16,393 of the 60,06,675 voters whose names were placed under adjudication have been marked as “deleted”.

With the completion of the SIR process, the total number of electors in West Bengal declined from 7.66 crore at the beginning of the revision exercise to 6.77 crore, indicating that nearly 89 lakh names — or 11.62% of the electorate — have been removed from the rolls.