A bench of CJI Surya Kant, Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi said the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court has informed that out of 60,06,675 objections filed against deletion of names from the electoral roll, judicial officers (of whom 500 were from Bengal and another 200 from Odisha and Jharkhand) had taken decisions on 47,30,000 as of Wednesday morning.
“The Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court informed us that the pending objections may be decided by April 7. Keeping in mind the above dates, these matters are posted (for further hearing) on April 6,” the bench said.
In order to appeal against the decision of the Judicial Officer, the Supreme Court, using its extraordinary powers under Article 142, directed the constitution of an Election Tribunal (the Election Commission had notified 19 tribunals), including former Chief Justices of the Supreme Court and former Supreme Court judges, in the face of serious doubts expressed by the State Government about the fairness of the procedure adopted by the Election Commission Officers.The judges said the Court of Appeal would be empowered to “re-examine the full record, including the grounds assigned by the judicial officer in deciding the objection, before ruling on an appeal before it, and to inform the parties of those grounds”.
Courts free to develop own procedures: SC
The court is free to frame its own procedure in accordance with the principles of natural justice and is required to decide the appeal after giving the parties a fair opportunity of being heard,” it said, adding that those intending to appeal to the court will be provided with reasons for rejection of their claims by judicial officers.Senior lawyer Kalyan Banerjee objected to the Council of Europe’s one-day training for former chief justices and judges before starting court work on Thursday. “Tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies. They have to act independently. Why training,” he asked. “They are former chief justices and high court judges. Apparently, they will act independently. The training is to handle computers and soft copies of documents. Do not raise frivolous objections,” the CJI said.EC lawyer and senior advocate DS Naidu said this is not training but just induction.“They have vast experience in deciding cases. You don’t have to worry about the EC influencing the bench,” Justice Bhachi said. Advocate Kapil Sibal said, “When we have some grievances, we must have the freedom to approach the HC CJ for help.” The bench said, “Obviously, you have the right to approach the Kolkata HC CJ. But do not attend as a group or delegation.” If you send a political delegation, we will tell the Chief Justice not to receive such a delegation. Mr. Banerjee or the Attorney General can go for the meeting. Where is the need for political workers to meet the Chief Justice? ““The problem is that, to the best of our knowledge and information, representations by political alliances or associations were made not only to the chief justice of the Supreme Court but also to the district judges. We do not want judicial officers to be interfered with in this way,” Justice Bagchi said.