SC raps Bengal for rushing to court daily against SIR

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday rapped the West Bengal govt for rushing to court every now and then with “vague and irrelevant” reasons to delay the completion of the Special Intensive Revision of state electoral rolls, to expedite which the SC has deployed judicial officers from Jharkhand and Odisha.

“Please do not come to the court with vague reasons and try to delay the process. Every day there cannot be an irrelevant reason here and there. There must be an end to it. We went beyond our mandate (by using exclusive powers under Article 142 to direct deployment of judicial officers to carry out a task which is essentially in the EC domain). You are making unnecessary complaints,” CJI Surya Kant said.




The remark came after Kapil Sibal levelled the serious charge before the CJI and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that “strange things have happened. EC officials are giving training to judicial officers, who were deployed by the Calcutta HC CJ, on which documents submitted with claims of voters are to be accepted.”

Sibal said it marked a violation of the SC’s direction that the modalities would be decided by the chief justice of Calcutta HC. The bench, however, disliked the issues relating to SIR being raked up every now and then by the Bengal govt for one or the other reason.

“When we said the HC CJ will decide the modalities, we meant he would decide which judicial officer is to be deployed where and what facilities were to be provided to him. The judicial officer alone will decide the pending claims and validity of documents submitted by the voters,” said the bench, disagreeing with Sibal’s charge about the EC disregarding the SC. Justice Bagchi said, “If the EC officials will not give training to judicial officers, who else will. Our order is as clear as daylight. We gave an alien responsibility to the judicial officers to expedite SIR. Both the state govt and the EC must provide and create a congenial atmosphere for them to work.”

Finding the state at the receiving end, Sibal said “the state chief secretary is here as unfortunately her voting rights are being put to question by the EC”. The bench said, “Ask your chief secretary to work in tandem with the EC and judicial officers for expeditious completion of SIR.”

Sibal turned to another aspect and said the EC must publish the supplementary voter lists after the publication of the final voter list on Feb 28, as and when a cluster of voters’ names were decided by the judicial officers for inclusion in the voter list.

The bench said SIR would be carried out strictly in accordance with court’s orders, which also specify which documents to be accepted for scrutiny of claims.
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