Supreme Court: Won’t let SIR stall, nor let genuine voters be left out India News

New Delhi: Supreme Court The party on Monday said it would not allow any delay in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in 12 states under any circumstances, but expressed readiness to accept suggestions to ensure that genuine voters are not left out, reports Dhananjay Mahapatra. The CJI-led bench extended by a week the February 7 deadline for submission of documents by voters in the notification issued by the EC, including 136 crore voters categorized as “logical discrepancies”. It also sought an affidavit from the Bangladesh DGP regarding the individuals responsible for the EC TMC Officials tried to derail SIR’s plans. “We want the country to remember the law of the land,” it said.We do not regulate the internal mechanisms of EC:SCA bench of CJI Surya Kant, Justices Joymalya Bagchi and NV Anjaria heard West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee passionately advocated for the termination of SIR, expressing displeasure over the state government not providing the names of 8,500 Group B cadre officers to the EC to assist the Election Revision Officer (ERO) and Assistant ERO in the massive document verification exercise. The dissatisfaction had such an impact that the West Bengal government provided the list to the court within minutes and said it would verify the suitability of the officials.The court also dismissed concerns expressed by Banerjee’s lawyer Shyam Divan, who told the judge that the process adopted by the Election Commission would lead to mass exclusion of voters as 50 per cent of voters’ cases facing scrutiny for “logical discrepancies” were due to misspellings of names due to translation errors.“This is a speculative concern,” the bench said, adding that the Election Commission, by selecting suitable officials from among the 8,500 officers provided by the state government, will assist the ERO and eros in cases where notices are issued merely because of misspelling of names and help them include them in the voters’ list.While the Bengal government, represented by a group of senior advocates, has strongly objected to the participation of micro observers drawn from central PSUs and the Union government, the bench said micro observers along with additional personnel provided by the state governments would be helpful to the Equality and Equality Organizations, although the final decision on inclusion or deletion of voters from the final list will be taken by the Equality Organizations only.Due to the deadline for filing documents on February 7, the review and hearing period has been extended by one week, and the time for publishing the final voter list originally scheduled for February 14 may be extended by another week, to February 21.Advocate Kalyan Banerjee claimed that the Election Commission has lodged and entertained thousands of anonymous complaints against the inclusion of names in the electoral rolls despite rules and regulations stipulating that the person filing the complaint must be present during the hearing.“We will not regulate the EC’s internal mechanisms for dealing with such issues,” the bench said. Senior advocate V Giri, appearing for Sanatani Sangsad, alleged that there was widespread violence and open threats were made to EC officials to undermine the work of the SIR.“Thousands of objections to names on the electoral roll were burned,” said Giri, who asked the judge to allow new objections to be filed within an extended deadline for filing documents.For West Bengal, Menaka Guruswamy told the bench that the organization was managing the temple and wondered how the temple management organization had the standing to file such an application.