New Delhi: Senior Trinamool Congress leader Kalyan Banerjee Wednesday said the Supreme Court judgment on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was confined to the Bihar case and could not be treated as an all-India ruling, asserting that the issues raised in West Bengal were completely different.
Reacting to the apex court’s verdict, Banerjee, who is a senior advocate, said the court had repeatedly clarified that its observations were limited to Bihar and the specific issues raised in that case.
The Supreme Court judgment was only for the Bihar case. The court repeatedly emphasised that its observations were limited to the Bihar matter, Banerjee told reporters.
He, however, highlighted what he described as the most significant aspect of the judgment — the court’s observation that the Election Commission does not have the authority to decide questions of citizenship.
If someone’s name is deleted on the grounds that they are considered a non-citizen, the Election Commission does not have the authority to determine whether a person is a citizen or a non-citizen, Banerjee said.
He said the court had made it clear that in cases where electoral rolls are altered on citizenship grounds, the matter must be referred to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act.
If the Election Commission has deleted any name on the ground of citizenship, then they should refer the matter to the appropriate authority under the Citizenship Act, he said, adding that the concerned authority alone would decide whether an affected person was a citizen or not.
Banerjee said that if the competent authority ultimately holds that a person is a citizen, the individual’s name must be restored to the voters’ list.
The TMC leader linked the court’s observations to his party’s long-standing position that neither the central government nor the police could independently decide citizenship status.
We have been saying this for a long time that the central government has no power, or the police have no power, to decide who is a citizen and who is not a citizen, he said.
Drawing a distinction between the proceedings in the Bihar case and the litigation involving West Bengal, Banerjee said the Bengal matter centred on the logical discrepancies category introduced by the Election Commission and involved separate legal questions.
The Election Commission of India inserted the logical discrepancy only in the Bengal case. Therefore, our case is completely different, he said.
He also said procedural concerns in the West Bengal matter had been addressed differently by the Supreme Court, including safeguards and an adjudicatory mechanism involving members of the judiciary and an appellate forum.
Banerjee maintained that while the apex court had, in principle, upheld the constitutionality of the SIR process in Bihar, the judgment contained several safeguards and directions whose full implications would become clearer after a detailed reading of the order.
Unless I see the full judgment, I can’t tell you what the other safeguards are, he said, reiterating that the Bihar verdict was not 100 per cent applicable to the Bengal case.
In a major victory for the Election Commission, the Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld its power to conduct SIR and said the exercise breathes life into the constitutional mandate for fair elections.
In its ruling on the intensely debated issue, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant held that the EC has the authority to examine citizenship status only for the limited purpose of determining eligibility for the electoral roll.
It also held that deletion from the voter list does not amount to a legal declaration that an individual is not a citizen.
To prevent disenfranchisement, the apex court asked the poll panel to refer all cases of names being deleted on citizenship grounds to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act within four weeks.
It said the competent authority must conclude the citizenship determination before the next assembly or local body elections.
If the authority confirms the individual’s citizenship, the name must be immediately restored to the electoral rolls, the verdict directed.