West Bengal election is not legally valid: Former CEC S.Y. Quraishi

Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi.

Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi alleged that the West Bengal elections were not legally valid. He reinstated that the decisions at the Election Commission of India should be based on a majority.

“Were the West Bengal elections legally valid? In my opinion, it was not. I have said this several times; I will say it again. Now it is in front of the Supreme Court; I am hoping they will take the right decision,” Mr. Quraishi said. He further added that some parts of it may have been valid but also said that in places where there was suspicious of majority Muslim voters being removed must be rechecked and go for re-polls if needed.

“This government has been in power for 6-7 months. People are happy. But some people are raising questions, maybe because they did not get the outcome that they desired,” Minister Dilip Ghosh said on Friday (November 6, 2026), reacting to Mr. Quraishi’s allegations. He also warned that accepting the people’s verdict and choice of government is the right decision; otherwise the people opposing it have a “tough” road ahead.

This comes after the former CEC raised allegations against the SIR process and discrepancies at the West Bengal elections while delivering the keynote address at the Hashim Abdul Halim Memorial Lecture on Thursday (November 5, 2026) in Kolkata.

“The CEC is not the Election Commission. The rules first call for unanimous decisions. If that is not possible, there must be a majority-based decision among the three members of the ECI,” Mr. Quraishi said. He added that the CEC is not the ECI on their own, and their decision alone cannot be final.

The former CEC said this in reference to The Indian Express report, which had claimed that election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised at least 14 objections to the various decisions allegedly taken unilaterally by CEC Gyanesh Kumar.

Meanwhile, Mr. Quraishi also said that the voter is not supposed to beg for their voting rights; rather, tradition in the past ensured that voter cards were delivered to the homes of each voter, and they did not have to negotiate to be included in the voter lists. He accused the special intensive revision (SIR) was used as a process to do backdoor checks for citizenships.

“It was neither smooth nor transparent. So many questions were raised that are currently being heard in the Supreme Court. Now, things will come out clearly once their judgment arrives, regarding what went wrong and what was correct,” Mr. Quraishi added.