Appellate tribunals can’t issue notices, hold virtual hearings or download orders: IE report

• Eleven former High Court judges flagged serious flaws in the ECI’s appeal portal, including missing facilities to serve notices, hold virtual hearings, obtain additional documents and download orders

• The 19 West Bengal tribunals cleared only 1.06 lakh appeals in four months, with 93 per cent resulting in names being restored; the ECI reported 38 lakh pending appeals

• Earlier warnings went unheeded, according to a tribunal judge, while questions remain over whether the August meeting’s concerns reached the Supreme Court and ECI, and what corrective action followed

Barely two weeks after reporting that two Election Commissioners had objected in writing 14 times over 10 months to decisions and the functioning of the Election Commission, The Indian Express has published another investigation.

The report, by Damini Nath and Atri Bhattacharya, says 11 former high court judges had raised concerns about the appeal portal presented to them. Published on Tuesday, the report cites minutes of a meeting attended by the 11 judges in August 2026.

It is unclear, however, whether the Calcutta High Court forwarded the minutes to the Supreme Court and the Election Commission of India, and, if so, what response the ECI gave and what corrective steps it took.

The 19 appellate tribunals were set up in West Bengal following the Supreme Court’s orders to hear appeals against decisions of judicial officers on the eligibility of voters during the SIR exercise. The ECI told the Supreme Court in September 2026 that 38.31 lakh appeals had been filed—22.21 lakh seeking restoration of deleted names and 16.10 lakh seeking deletion of names. Of these, only 1.26 lakh had been disposed of by 10 September, leaving more than 37 lakh appeals pending. 

There was no clarity till now whether the tribunals were sending notices to appellants or how the tribunals were prioritising the appeals. There was no clarity whether appellants were being given written orders explaining reasons for rejecting or upholding their appeals. It now appears that the portal meant for appeals had serious design defects. It is not clear why they were not flagged at the very outset. The concerns of the tribunal heads in West Bengal, the only state where such tribunals are functioning to deal with post-SIR appeals, have also put the controversial head of the IT Division in ECI, Seema Khanna, in a spot.  

The Indian Express report says that the 11 tribunal heads met on 11 August and raised the following defects in the portal:

• ‘Can’t serve notices’: “There is no mechanism…till date in spite of several requests and reminders to develop a common and proper mechanism on the portal to serve notice to the parties directly or through proper channel. Sometime in the month of May 2026 some of us even approved a format of notice to be issued to the parties but it has not seen the light of the day till date.”

• ‘Can’t store documents: “…when the Tribunal finds uploaded documents are not in terms of enumeration form or whenever the Tribunal needs additional documents, there is no mechanism how the same are to be secured. In the absence of such a mechanism on the portal, each Tribunal is trying to serve the notices through e-emails, that is, through DM/DEO concerned but the response is very poor.”

• ‘Can’t hold virtual hearings’: “There is no mechanism to hold virtual hearings in case the Tribunal intends to hear the parties…Once the appeal is disposed of either by way of deletion or inclusion of the voter, it cannot be restored on the portal if the restoration is needed on account of direction of the judicial order or otherwise.”

• ‘Can’t give an order copy to appellant’: “There is no procedure for the parties to get certified copy or download copy of the order of the Tribunal from the designated portal to know the reasons why their name is deleted or included.” This is significant because the Supreme Court, in its order on April 1, had asked the tribunals to communicate the reasons and to revisit the records before they decide on the appeals.

• ‘Can’t digitise physical records’: The judges flagged the uncertainty over the appeals filed physically with the District Magistrate/District Election Officers. “…there is no proper mechanism for maintenance of record of these appeals since they are not digitized. If their appeals are not brought to the proper channel, injustice will be done to such citizens,” they said.

The report also adds, “There was an earlier alert, too. On 22 May, one of the tribunal judges, wrote to the Calcutta High Court Chief highlighting how the issue of setting up a mechanism to send a notice was raised but went unheeded. “Absence of such a mechanism to notify the parties to the appeal is adversely affecting the pace of disposal of appeals,” said the judge in the letter to the CJ.

The judge also underlined the lack of accurate data on the number of appeals disposed of being shared by the EC. “Unfortunately, through ‘EC source’ incorrect data is being catered to the press regarding number of disposal, suppressing the fact ECI has not been able to set up proper mechanism for issuance of notice to the parties for hearing of the appeal,” the judge said in the letter.

The report has appeared on a day when INDIA bloc MPs are scheduled to march to Nirvachan Sadan to demand the resignation of the CEC, scrapping of SIR and restructuring the Election Commission.