West Bengal SIR | 'Cannot pressure officials': Supreme Court sets no timeline to complete appeal hearings

New Delhi: While hearing the petitions against the SIR in West Bengal on Monday, the Supreme Court declined to pass any order fixing a timeline for the 19 appellate tribunals to decide the appeals of deleted voters.

Around 700 judicial officers from West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand are deployed to adjudicate over 60 lakh objections of those excluded from the voter list.

It was argued that 16 lakh appeals have been filed before appellate tribunals and it is not possible to dispose of these appeals before the elections.

The bench, however, noted that as per the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice’s report as of April 11, there were over 34 lakh appeals.

Senior advocate Shyam Divan, on behalf of some of the petitioners, argued that if the appellate tribunals, which have just started functioning, show substantial progress over the next week, then surely some supplementary list can be allowed.

The court opined that it might consider the plea to allow the publication of supplementary rolls to include persons whose appeals are allowed before the elections.

Senior advocate D S Naidu, the EC’s counsel, contended the appeals could go on so that the appellants have their right vindicated, if at all they could. Senior advocate Kalyan Bandyopadhyay, appearing for petitioners, said April 23 is the poll day of the first phase and all those appeals pertaining to the first phase could be disposed of by April 20.

One of the petitioners’ counsels also asked whether the appeals will be decided within a time frame.

To this, the bench asked if the counsel wanted it to put the former CJs and judges under pressure. “Deploy officers where there was a trust deficit between the state and the constitutional entity. These judicial officers will undertake a verification, but [with] the volume they had to do; there was always a chance of error. Just consider, going through 1,000 documents a day. Speaking for myself, if the accuracy rate is 70 per cent, I’ll rate the activity excellent. This is the pressure at which judicial officers have worked. There will always be a margin of error,” the court said.

The petitioner’s counsel said the EC was not even placing orders before the appellate tribunal and urged the bench to extend the freezing of the electoral roll. In response, the bench asked the counsel to move the issue before the appellate tribunal.

Bandyopadhyay said an impression has been given that all pending cases have been adjudicated.

The bench said the persons whose claims were adjudicated by April 9, the date when the rolls were frozen, could vote on April 23.

“In 153 constituencies, the last date of nomination was April 6, and the list was published on the night of April 6. There was some spill over on April 7 or 8. Those names will be included in the electoral roll for the April 23 poll, don’t worry if their names are there, they will be voting,” the bench said.

Bandyopadhyay said the people of Bengal are looking towards the top court for relief. He said, “Deprivations are so much, 34 lakh appellants, they are genuine voters, that is the reason they are looking towards you not the EC”.

Check political background, NIA told

In a related suo motu matter, the NIA submitted a status report in connection with its probe into the gherao of judicial officers in Malda district on April 1 by those protesting their deletion from the voters’ list. The bench asked the agency to inform it about the political background of the accused persons. “We want to know if any of these people arrested had any political background. We don’t want this to be an academic exercise. This has to be taken to a logical conclusion,” the bench said.