ECI to enable tribunal judges in Bengal to e-sign and upload orders

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Updated - November 02, 2026 09:12 pm IST - New Delhi

Election Commission of India. File | Photo Credit: The Hindu

The Election Commission of India (ECI) is likely to revise the ECINet portal software to enable judges of Appellate Tribunals in West Bengal to e-sign and upload orders instead of Aadhaar-based authentication, the norm till now.

There are more than 38 lakh voters whose cases are stuck in the 19 Appellate Tribunals in the State.

The ECI’s move comes after tribunal judges had flagged that the Commission’s requirement for Aadhaar authentication on its portal hindered the issuance of final orders, official sources said.

The Appellate Tribunals were formed on directions of the Supreme Court. Judicial officers, drawn from a list the Calcutta High Court had sent to the top court, are adjudicating roughly 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases. On March 10, the Supreme Court had directed that a separate appellate body be set up so that people could challenge decisions made by those officers.

Out of the roughly 60 lakh “doubtful” cases, the 700 judicial officers cleared and restored approximately 32.77 lakh voters on the rolls. The rest 27.23 lakh were rejected, of which 22 lakh appealed to the tribunals.

The Election Commission constituted the Appellate Tribunals on March 21. These began functioning around April 13, and on April 16, the Supreme Court ordered that voters whose appeals succeeded be added through a supplementary list. This came only days before Assembly elections began on April 23, and reportedly only 136 names had been cleared by then.

Parallelly, 16,10,311 bulk appeals were instituted at the appellate tribunals challenging the decision to include voters restored by the Judicial Officers, bringing the total number of cases pending in them to a little more than 38 lakh.

On October 2, the ECI directed the Chief Electoral Officers of all States and Union Territories where the SIR had been completed or was underway to compare the pre-SIR voter lists with the current ones and enrol within one month those who have been left out but are eligible through Form 6.

However, those whose cases are pending with the tribunals would not be part of this drive it was clarified.

Published - November 02, 2026 07:57 pm IST

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