New Delhi: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear Monday the plea filed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee challenging the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state scheduled to be held this year.
As per the cause list published on the website of the apex court, a Bench led by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and N.V. Anjaria will take up Banerjee’s petition along with similar pleas filed by Trinamool Congress (TMC) MPs Dola Sen and Derek O’Brien for hearing February 9.
Questioning the legality of the SIR process, Chief Minister Banerjee, in her petition, has accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of acting with political bias and alleged that the manner in which the voter revision exercise is being carried out would result in the deletion of names of lakhs of voters belonging to marginalised sections of society.
She has sought interim directions restraining the poll body from deleting the name of any voter during the SIR exercise, particularly those placed under the “logical discrepancy” category.
In the previous hearing, the apex court had issued notice to the ECI on CM Banerjee’s plea and posted the matter for further hearing Monday.
The CJI Kant-led Bench had said that spelling variations due to local dialects are pan-India phenomena and cannot be a ground to exclude bona fide voters.
Addressing the apex court, CM Banerjee claimed that women who change surnames after marriage and people who shift residences were being disproportionately affected.
Alleging selective targeting of West Bengal ahead of upcoming state elections, she asserted that similar voter revision exercises were not being conducted in Northeastern states like Assam and that repeated representations to the ECI had gone unanswered.
Responding to the submissions, the CJI-led Bench had assured that the Supreme Court would find a “practical solution”, adding that no genuine voter’s right can be taken away.
In a related development ahead of the crucial court hearing Monday, the West Bengal government has informed the ECI that it can provide 8,505 Group-B officers for the remainder of the SIR exercise.
The West Bengal government has also said that Bengali-speaking officers must be deployed to avoid language- and spelling-related discrepancies.
Meanwhile, the ECI has clarified that permanent resident certificates issued by elected public representatives or Block Development Officers (BDOs) will not be treated as valid identity documents for the SIR exercise.
The poll body said that only certificates issued by District Magistrates, Additional District Magistrates and Sub-Divisional Officers — and in Kolkata, by Collectors — under the relevant legal provisions promulgated in 1999 would be considered valid.
The ruling Trinamool Congress has objected to the clarification, with CM Banerjee accusing the ECI of deliberately refusing to accept valid documents with the intent of deleting genuine names from the voters’ list.
