Senior advocate Rauf Rahim, for Mr. Chowdhury, linked the exclusion from the voter list to the denial of essential welfare measures like ration cards in West Bengal. ‘Snail’s pace’In July, the Supreme Court had taken up a similar petition filed by Prasenjit Bose, chairperson of the SIR Committee, the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee. It had flagged that the deletion from the West Bengal electoral roll during the SIR had led to serious civil consequences extending beyond the right to vote. The petition had argued that the impact of these notifications was made worse by the “snail’s pace” of the Appellate Tribunals. Mr. Bose’s petition had contended that only 38,000 appeals were disposed of out of a total 34 lakh filed in West Bengal.