O’Brien moved the Court to have the results in 31 assembly constituencies declared void, and fresh polls held once all pending appeals are disposed of.
The BCI has opposed the prayer, stating that election results can be challenged only through election petitions under Article 329(b) of the Constitution, and not on the basis of faults in the electoral roll.
It also said O’Brien’s main petition had become infructuous after the Supreme Court upheld the West Bengal SIR exercise on May 27.
The ECI has accused O’Brien of having deliberately conflated all categories of deletions in voter rolls in an attempt to create a misleading narrative. It said the removal of absent, shifted, dead and duplicate entries was never placed before the judicial officers.
Excluding these, the adjudicated deletions in Dinhata, Khargram, Bally and Howrah Uttar were lower than the TMC’s losing margins completely demolishing O’Brien’s “speculative theory” that the adjudication exercise altered the electoral outcome.
It further highlighted 21 seats won by the TMC where adjudicated deletions exceeded the winning margin.
The ECI also filed a counter affidavit in a petition by Prasenjit Bose which seeks constituency-wise SIR data and changes to the appeals process.