KOLKATA: The ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal on Tuesday lashed out at the Election Commission of India (ECI) hours after the Supreme Court (SC) approved to deploy more judges from neighbouring Jharkhand and Odisha for completion of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bengal.
The Trinamool Congress alleged that the SIR exercise has gone out of the ECI's control.
The opposition BJP demanded the ECI to complete the SIR protest first and assembly elections could be conducted in the state.
“No SIR and no vote in Bengal. Our party is ready for vote but the SIR exercise must have to be completed before holding elections. There is no report of trouble related to the SIR in the non-BJP-ruled states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu. But the problem occurs only in Bengal,” Samik Bhattacharya, BJP’s state president, told the media on Tuesday.
The ruling party in wrote in a post on X saying, "ECI has effectively lost control over the conduct of the SIR process in Bengal. The terms are now being clearly dictated by the Hon’ble Supreme Court, as consistently urged by Mamata Banerjee."
The party hailed the SC order, stating that it has effectively compromised the BJP-ECI nexus' voter deletion agenda: "This categorical direction dismantles the BJP-ECI attempt to arbitrarily shift goalposts and manipulate documentary standards. The conspiracy to selectively target, intimidate, and harass voters in Bengal has once again run into a firm judicial barrier. Institutions must function within the bounds of law, not at the behest of partisan interests."
It further claimed that the ECI's "sheer incompetence and administrative failure" was exposed and that "this intervention itself speaks volumes."
In a more recent post on X, the TMC claimed that there over 50 lakh cases pending and only 250 judicial officers available, which makes publishing the finalised roll by February 28 impossible.
The party questioned the alleged institutional failure: "If this is not a reflection of how deeply COMPROMISED and DYSFUNCTIONAL the Election Commission has become, what is?"
The apex court on Tuesday moved in quickly to swell the ranks of judicial officers deployed to aid the ECI in the completion of the SIR process in Bengal, even alerting Odisha and Jharkhand to spare their judges.
A Special Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant convened urgently after receiving a letter from the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court detailing the perils of the “enormous exercise”.
The Calcutta High Court Chief Justice had come upon a whopping 50 lakh claims and objections raised by voters excluded on grounds of logical discrepancies and mapping pending before the Electoral Registration Officers/Assistant Election Registration Officers (EROs/AEROs).