KOLKATA: “Motaab Sheikh and Motab Herul are the same person,” the appellate tribunal ruled on April 5 in its first SIR appeal, accepting the candidature of Congress’ Farakka candidate. Aadhar card As proof of identity after Election Commission No reason was given for his exclusion.Retired judge TS Sivagnanam, while delivering the verdict on Motab’s appeal, said that the tribunal has sought specific reasons to be recorded by the judicial officer for excluding Motab’s name. However, the Election Commission failed to provide any information citing “technical reasons”.In earlier proceedings in the Supreme Court regarding the SIR in West Bengal, Justice Joymalya Bagchi pointed out that the software included a specific column designed to record the “reason” for each voter’s inclusion or exclusion.Justice Bagchi had said: “The architecture of the software provides a field for comments, where the concerned authorities have to give reasons while deciding whether the logical inconsistency justifies deletion or warrants inclusion.”Senior advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu, representing the Election Commission, had assured the bench that the entire digital record would be made available to the appellate tribunal.The controversy arose from discrepancies between Motab’s name in the 2002 voter list and the first list after the SIR on December 16 last year.The tribunal examined the entire records placed before AERO, where Motab’s Aadhaar card proved crucial. While Aadhaar is not a document proving citizenship, it serves as a document of identity. In fact, after the Supreme Court judgment in the Bihar SIR case on September 8, 2025, Aadhaar was included as a “supporting” document by the EC.Applying that reasoning to Motab’s appeal, the tribunal held that its basis reflected his name as Motab Sheikh. “This would be sufficient to accept the case of the appellant,” it said.The tribunal also took note of his passport (issued in 2018) and driving license (issued in 2001), both of which identified him as Motab Shaikh, son of Izabul Shaikh.The tribunal also considered the affidavit filed for rectification after the 2002 SIR recorded his name as ‘Motab Herul’ instead of ‘Motab Sheikh’.In addition, he also presented the birth certificates of his four children; The name of the eldest, born in 1993, was recorded as ‘Motab Sheikh’. Interestingly, all six of Motab’s siblings had cleared the SIR process, with their names appearing in the voting list, while Motab’s sole name was excluded.