Election Commission filed more than 12 lakh appeals against West Bengal voters, and every one of them carries the same date: April 5, 2026. As reported by @chhuti_is in @thewire_in , based on appeal records compiled by the Civic Research Group, the Election Commission appealed against 16,08,175 of the 32,53,401 Bengal voters whom judicial officers had examined and found eligible. That is 49.4%. This number is not in dispute. In its own September submission to Supreme Court, ECI itself reported 16,10,311 appeals against inclusion. What is new is when they were filed. The Wire's verification of unique appeal IDs shows that 99% of the appeals carry one of three dates - 🔹April 5: 12,15,318 appeals (87%) 🔹April 6: 1,39,954 appeals 🔹April 8: 30,102 appeals Now look at the calendar. Judicial officers finished examining more than 60 lakh cases by the first week of April. The rolls for the Assembly election were frozen at midnight on April 7. Polling began on April 23. So within days of judges clearing these voters & on the eve of the freeze, the Commission filed appeals against nearly half of them. Do the arithmetic. 12.15 lakh appeals in a single day works out to about 14 appeals every second, around the clock for 24 hours. Acc. to The Wire a single timestamp shared by more than 12 lakh appeals points to appeals created or uploaded as a batch. These were individual citizens, each one cleared by a judge after their documents were examined. Was even one of their cases individually reviewed before the Commission challenged it? There's more. A retired judge sitting as an appellate tribunal in Murshidabad said on record that a substantial share of the appeals before him were filed by the Additional Chief Electoral Officer's office. The Commission still hasn't disclosed the grounds for these appeals, who authorised them, or how they were prepared. Questions that Election Commission answer: 🔹How were more than 12 lakh appeals generated on a single day, April 5? 🔹Was each voter's case individually examined before an appeal was filed against them? If so, by whom, and when? 🔹Who ordered these appeals, and why were they filed just before the rolls froze? 🔹On what grounds did the Commission challenge voters whom judges had already cleared? 🔹Will it withdraw every appeal that was not based on an individual review of the voter's case? Judges examined each voter one by one. The Commission appears to have challenged them in bulk. m.thewire.in/article/governm…