SC: Can vote if tribunals restore deleted names to electoral roll before poll

NEW DELHI: Acceding to TMC’s requests, Supreme Court has allowed people whose names were deleted during the special intensive revision but restored to the electoral rolls by appellate tribunals to vote in the two phased Bengal assembly polls on April 23 and 29.

With TMC MP and senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee repeatedly requesting the court to allow at least those whose appeals against deletions are allowed by the 19 tribunals to vote, a bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said, “If an appeal is allowed by an appellate tribunal and a conclusive direction for inclusion or exclusion is issued, such directions shall be duly effectuated prior to polling on April 23 or 29.”

The bench exercised its extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution and directed the Election Commission.

SC: No vote for those on rolls but face appeals against inclusion

Supreme Court told EC that “wherever the appellate tribunals are able to decide appeals by April 21 (for those constituencies going to polls on April 23) or April 27 (for those where voting is scheduled for April 29), such appellate orders shall be given effect to by issuing a supplementary revised electoral roll, and all necessary consequences with respect to the right to vote shall follow.”

But the bench did not agree with senior advocate Rauf Rahim, who argued that people whose names were included in the 2002 electoral rolls but deleted during the SIR exercise be allowed to vote if they have filed appeals against the decision of judicial officers who carried out scrutiny of voters in the ‘logical discrepancy’ category.

“Mere pendency of appeals preferred by excluded persons before the appellate tribunals shall not entitle them to exercise their right to vote,” it said. By this logic, those included in the voter list but have appeals against their inclusion pending before tribunals also should not be permitted to vote, SC said.

There are as many as 34 lakh appeals pending before the 19 tribunals.

The CJI-led bench, with regular inputs from the Calcutta high court Chief Justice, had pressed into service 700-odd judicial officers — 500 from Bengal and 200 from Jharkhand and Odisha. They were tasked with scrutinising around 60 lakh people’s claims for inclusion following their deletion during EC’s SIR drive. Most deletions were due to ‘logical discrepancy’, which was mainly because of their inability to prove their credentials as citizens or lineage to a resident of Bengal.

SC had also taken suo motu cognisance of the violent attack on certain judicial officers engaged in SIR work on SC orders in Malda district’s Kalichak area and had directed the NIA to investigate the incidents.

On April 13, it asked NIA to reveal the political affiliations of the arrested accused and posted for further hearing on April 24, a day after the first phase of polling.
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