SIR in West Bengal: SC permits deployment of civil judges to handle 80 lakh claims, rues 'unfortunate blame game'

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court to deploy civil judges and requisition judicial officers from neighbouring states to handle nearly 80 lakh claims and objections in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant, along with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi, took note of a letter from the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice. The letter stated that 250 district judges currently deployed for the SIR exercise would take around 80 days to process the claims and objections, news agency PTI reported.

Taking note of the time constraints and the scale of the exercise, the bench permitted the deployment of civil judges to speed up the process. It also asked the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice to approach his counterparts in Jharkhand and Odisha to requisition judicial officers of similar rank to assist in the revision exercise.

The court directed the Election Commission (EC) to bear the expenses for deploying judicial officers from Jharkhand and Odisha.

The top court further allowed the EC to publish the final electoral roll on February 28. It clarified that the poll panel may issue supplementary lists as the verification process continues.

Invoking its plenary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court said voters enlisted in supplementary electoral rolls would be included as part of the February 28 final list published by the EC.

The court also noted logical discrepancies in the progeny linking with the 2002 voter list. These include mismatches in the parent’s name and cases where the age difference between a voter and his or her parent is less than 15 years or more than 50 years.

On February 20, expressing concern over the ongoing tussle between the West Bengal government and the EC, the top court had issued an “extraordinary” direction to deploy serving and former district judges to assist the poll panel in the controversy-ridden SIR exercise.

Ruing the “unfortunate blame game” and the “trust deficit” between the EC and the “democratically elected” Trinamool Congress government in Bengal, the bench had passed fresh directions to ensure completion of the electoral roll revision.