The appellate tribunal in West Bengal on Monday ordered the Election Commission to include Congress candidate Md Mottakin Alam’s name in the voter list after it was deleted during the adjudication phase of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls.

The tribunal noted that the judicial officer adjudicating Alam’s case had said that the father’s name was different in the documents submitted during the process, and that the appellant’s age gap with the parents was too large.

It added that nothing had been submitted to show the power of the adjudicating authority to question the parentage of the appellant, adding that this cannot be the grounds to delete Alam from the voter list.

The order came amid Monday being the last day to file nominations for the Ratua Assembly constituency where Alam is contesting. The state polls will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29 and the counting of votes will take place on May 4.

The Congress candidate had approached the Supreme Court after his name was removed from the voter list during the revision process. On Monday, Alam’s plea was mentioned before the court, which directed the appellate tribunal to decide on the matter by 12.30 pm.

The tribunal then issued its order in an urgent hearing, after which Alam filed his nomination papers.

West Bengal is also among the 12 states and Union Territories where the special intensive revision of the electoral roll was undertaken.

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, showing that more than 61 lakh voters had been excluded. However, the process continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining under adjudication based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state.

The court had on March 10 ordered the formation of appellate tribunals. A person whose claim for inclusion in the electoral rolls has been rejected by a judicial officer can appeal the decision in the tribunal.

While the cases under adjudication have been decided on, the Election Commission is yet to set up all the 19 tribunals it had constituted.

What Alam’s tribunal order said

In his order on Monday, TS Sivagnanam, a retired chief justice of the Calcutta High Court who was heading the tribunal hearing the Congress candidate’s plea, noted that Alam had in November submitted the enumeration form with the documents.

The name of Alam’s father can be found in the 1971 voter list from the English Bazar Assembly constituency and in the 2002 electoral rolls, the tribunal observed, adding that Alam had won the Manikchak seat in the 2016 Assembly elections.

The Election Commission had issued him a notice during the revision process, saying that there was a discrepancy in his father’s name in the documents. The poll panel had also stated that the age difference between Alam and his parents was more than 50 years, the order noted.

The tribunal added: “The adjudicating judicial officers in the speaking order has observed that the father’s name of the appellant are two names and way too different and have no similarity at all.”

Sivagnanam noted that Alam had contested the panchayat polls in 2013 and the Assembly elections in 2016, both of which he had won. “Hence it is arbitrary for the ECI to exclude the name of the applicant from the 2026 voter list,” the tribunal ruled.

The order said that the discrepancy in the age between the father and the son was “likely due to mis-linking”.

It added: “Nothing has been placed before this tribunal to show the power of the adjudicating authority to question about the parentage of the appellant. This cannot be the ground to exclude the applicant from the voter list of 2026.”

Allowing Alam’s appeal, the judge directed the Election Commission to include his name in the voter list by 3 pm.

The inclusion came a day after the tribunal restored Motab Shaikh, the Congress candidate from Farakka, as a voter. Shaikh’s was the first case to be decided by the tribunal.

In this order, Sivagnanam noted that the Election Commission had cited “technical reasons” for not providing the circumstances leading to Shaikh’s name being deleted during the adjudication process.

Sivagnanam directed the poll panel to declare Shaikh a valid voter of Murshidabad through an additional list by 8 pm on Sunday. He stated that the passport submitted by Shaikh was sufficient proof, pointing out that there was no discrepancy in his father’s name in any record.