THE Supreme Court on Tuesday permitted the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice to deploy civil judges and also requisition judicial officers from neighbouring Jharkhand and Odisha to deal with 80 lakh claims and objections in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in West Bengal. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi took note of a letter by the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice that said 250 district judges deployed in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise will take around 80 days to deal with the claims and objections. Taking note of the grim situation and the time constraints, the bench permitted the deployment of civil judges to conduct the process. It asked the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice to request his Jharkhand and Odisha counterparts and requisition judicial officers of similar ranks to deal with the situation. It directed Election Commission to bear expenses for deploying judicial officers from Jharkhand and Odisha.

 

The top court also allowed the EC to publish the final electoral roll on February 28, and clarified that the poll panel can issue supplementary lists as verification process proceeds. It exercised plenary powers under Article 142 to enlist voters in the supplementary electoral rolls to be part of the February 28 final list published by the poll panel. The logical discrepancies in progeny linking with the 2002 voter list include instances of a mismatch in the parent’s name and the age difference between a voter and his/her parent being less than 15 years or more than 50 years. On February 20, dismayed over the ongoing tussle between the West Bengal Government and the EC, the top court issued an “extraordinary” direction to deploy serving and former district judges to assist the poll panel in the controversy-ridden SIR exercise in the State. Ruing the “unfortunate blame game” and the “trust deficit” between the EC and the “democratically elected” Trinamool Congress Government in Bengal, the bench passed a slew of fresh directions to ensure the completion of the SIR exercise.

 

The development evoked mixed reactions from different political parties in the State. The ruling Trinamool Congress had described the Supreme Court’s order as a clear indication that the Election Commission of India has effectively lost control over the conduct of the SIR process in West Bengal. “In an unprecedented move today, the Supreme Court was compelled to permit the deployment of judges from neighbouring states to address the massive bottleneck created by the Election Commission’s sheer incompetence and administrative failure. This intervention itself speaks volumes,” read a statement issued by Trinamool Congress immediately after the apex court order in the matter surfaced. Bharatiya Janata Party’s West Bengal unit President and the party’s Rajya Sabha member, Samik Bhattacharya, said that the Apex Court’s order had once again proved that without the court’s intervention at every stage, a smooth completion of the SIR exercise would never be possible in the State.

 

“The parallel SIR exercise has been conducted in several other States and Union Territories. But West Bengal had been the only State where such constant controversies and disruptions of the exercise had surfaced. This is because neither the State Government nor the State’s ruling party wants the exercise to be smoothly concluded. This has become evident from the Apex Court’s order once and again before, and today the same thing has been again established,” Bhattacharya said.