KOLKATA: With directives of the Supreme Court (SC), judicial officers in West Bengal on Monday started verification of documents related to the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state.
According to sources in the Election Commission of India (ECI), around 203 login IDs have been created for the judicial officers posted as District and session judges, Chief Judges, Additional district and Session Judges, Judges of Special CBI Courts, Commercial Courts, Special courts for trial of criminal cases against MPs and MLAs, Exclusive POSCO Courts, Judges posted in Benches of City Civil Court and City session Court, Calcutta for the scrutiny of the SIR documents of voters belonging to the logical discrepancies category in Bengal.
Today, Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Sujoy Paul again held an internal coordination meeting with West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal, Special Electoral Roll Observer Subrata Gupta, a retired IAS officer, state Chief Secretary (CS) Nandini Chakraborty, and senior administrative and police officials over the SIR work entrusted to judicial officers, sources said.
Justice Pal on Sunday had held a virtual meeting with the officials to decide what kind of documents are required to be verified by the judges.
Speaking to reporters after the nearly hour-long meeting, Agarwal described it as an “internal meeting”.
He said training of judicial officers on the online portal for the SIR of electoral rolls in the state was completed on Monday morning, and the exercise has already commenced in several places.
"There were some teething problems regarding OTPs, but these have been overcome,” Agarwal said.
Some judicial officers, who were present in the meeting at the HC expressed fear about their safety and security during SIR work in several highly areas in districts like Malda and Murshidabad.
The national poll panel has reportedly assured them to provide adequate security arrangements under Central forces if the situation demands.
On February 20, the Supreme Court issued an “extraordinary” direction to deploy serving and former district judges to assist the poll panel in the controversy-ridden SIR process in the state.
The apex court ordered deputation of judicial officers for adjudication of claims and objections of persons placed under the logical discrepancy lists and facing removal of their names from the electoral rolls.
Logical discrepancies in progeny linking with the 2002 voter list include a mismatch in parents’ names and cases where the age difference between a voter and the parent is less than 15 years or more than 50 years.