Won't let SIR be stalled, or genuine voters left out: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court said Monday it would under no circumstance allow stalling of special intensive revision (SIR) of voter rolls in 12 states but said it was open to suggestions to ensure genuine voters are not left out, reports Dhananjay Mahapatra.

The CJI-led bench extended by a week the Feb 7 deadline for submission of documents by voters issued notice by EC, including 1.36 crore voters categorised under 'logical discrepancy'. It also sought a personal affidavit from the Bengal DGP on EC's charge of TMC functionaries making attempts to derail SIR. "We hope the state remembers the laws of the land," it said.




We are not going to regulate internal mechanism of EC: SC

The bench of CJI Surya Kant, Justices Joymalya Bagchi and N V Anjaria, which had heard West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee passionately argue for discontinuing SIR, frowned upon the state govt for not providing the names of 8,500 group B cadre officials to EC for assisting electoral revision officers (EROs) and assistant EROs in the massive document verification work. The displeasure had a dramatic effect as the West Bengal govt provided the list within minutes to EC in the court and said it would verify the suitability of the officials.

The court also dismissed the fear expressed by Banerjee’s counsel Shyam Divan who told the bench that the process adopted by EC would lead to mass exclusion of voters given the fact that 50% of the cases of voters facing “logical discrepancy” scrutiny are misspelling of names, which happened due to translation errors.

“This is a speculative apprehension,” the bench said, and allayed it by saying suitable officials, inducted by EC from among the 8,500 officers provided by the state govt, would assist the EROs and AEROs about the cases where notices have been issued merely because of spelling errors in names and facilitate their inclusion in voter lists.

Though the Bengal govt, represented by a battery of senior advocates, vehemently argued against engagement of micro-observers drawn from central PSUs and the Union govt, the bench said the micro-observers along with the additional hands provided by the state govt would help the EROS and AEROs even though the the final decision on inclusion or deletion of voters from the final list would be taken by the EROs only.

Since the Feb 7 deadline for document submission, its scrutiny and hearing period is extended by one week, the scheduled publication of the final voter list on Feb 14 is likely to be extended by one more week, that is to Feb 21.

Advocate Kalyan Banerjee alleged that thousands of anonymous complaints against inclusion of names in voter lists have been filed and have been entertained by EC even as the rules and regulations mandate that person filing complaint must remain present during the hearing.

The bench said, “We are not going to regulate the internal mechanism of EC in dealing with such issues.” Senior advocate V Giri, appearing for Sanatani Sangsad, alleged that there is widespread violence and open threats being given to EC officials to derail the SIR work.

“Thousands of objections to names in voter lists were burnt,” Giri said and requested the bench to allow filing of fresh objections during the extended period for filing documents.

For West Bengal, Menaka Guruswamy told the bench that the organisation is managing temples and wondered how a temple management organisation would have locus standi to file such an application.
Select The Times of India as your preferred source on Google Search