KOLKATA: The Calcutta High Court (HC) on Sunday formed a three-member committee comprising a district judge, district magistrate (DM) and superintendent of police (SP) in every district of West Bengal to monitor verifications of documents related to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state.
Calcutta HC Chief Justice Sujoy Paul held a meeting with West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal and state chief secretary (CS) Nandini Chakraborty and decided to form the committee in every district.
A list of around 250 judicial officers in the state has been sent to the government, and the committee headed by them will start the scrutiny of SIR documents from Monday. The HC registrar also issued a notification in connection with the matter.
Following Friday’s Supreme Court (SC) directives, the HC Chief Justice on Saturday held a high-level meeting with the CS, director general of police, CEO Manoj Agarwal, representatives of the Election Commission of India (ECI) and advocate general to discuss how to complete the ongoing SIR by February 28 deadline set by the SC for publication of final voters’ lists.
The HC cancelled leaves of all the judicial officers till March 9 to solve the issues related to the 'logical discrepancies' before the post-SIR rolls in the state are released. Judges who are on leave have also been asked to join work, according to a notification issued by the Registrar (Judicial Service), HC, stated.
No judicial officer can take leave unless it is a medical emergency, according to the sources. They have also been asked not leave stations till March 9.
The apex court on Friday cited the “trust deficit” between the ECI and the West Bengal government to direct that serving and retired judicial officers be deployed to decide issues relating to “logical discrepancies” before the final post-SIR rolls are released.
These past and present district judges and additional district judges will perform the role of Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) in examining the claims and objections related to the SIR. Their decision will be final and deemed to be orders “passed by this court”, a three-judge bench of the Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi said.
The bench passed the “extraordinary order” in the current “extraordinary circumstances” by using its plenary and “extraordinary” powers under Article 142. It allowed the poll panel to publish the electoral rolls on February 28, as scheduled, and follow it up with a supplementary list of the names added to it after scrutiny.
The top court warned that the DGP “will face serious consequence(s)” if there are any further law-and-order problems during the SIR exercise. It asked the state CS, DGP and the advocate-general to meet the Chief Justice of the HC on Saturday morning and decide on the steps to implement the directions.
