'We don't want to rush it': Supreme Court refuses interim relief as 25 lakh deleted voters await tribunal hearing
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "'We don't want to rush it': Supreme Court refuses interim relief as 25 lakh deleted voters await tribunal hearing")
People attend the 'Dharna' over the SIR issue by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on its fifth day Photograph: (ANI)
Supreme Court denies interim relief to deleted West Bengal voters as 25 lakh await tribunal decisions ahead of assembly polls in April.
The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request from the West Bengal government to direct the Tribunal to pass an interim order allowing at least some category of voters who were wrongly deleted to vote. It also refused to set a deadline for the hearings of the 19 Tribunals, which have just heard two cases till now.
The fate of approximately 25 lakh people whose names were deleted during the Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls now hinges on tribunal proceedings, as thousands line up to appeal their deletion ahead of the West Bengal Assembly election on April 23 and April 29. What adds to the scale of deletion is the socio-economic profile of the voters being deleted, some of them are the most underprivileged sections in the society, such as poor daily wage workers, housewives and farmers. West Bengal is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the special intensive revision of the electoral roll was undertaken.
The Tribunal operations began on April 6, but as of now, the Tribunal has decided only two cases, both of which were election candidates, and they have been cleared. These are also under Supreme Court directives. Monday, April 6, was the deadline for adjudication of the voters in 152 constituencies going to the polls in the first phase, as the poll list has been frozen. While for the second phase of voter the deadline for 142- second phase constituencies will end on Thursday, April 9. Not even a single case for the ordinary voters has been heard.
Shyam Divan, appearing for the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, urged the bench to set a deadline of April 15 for the Tribunal to dispose of all the appeals so that they can be enrolled on April 18 in the final voter list. But the top court denied arguing that they do not want to interfere. “The tribunals will proceed with the hearings. We do not want to rush it, but we need to freeze the list somewhere,” observed the SC bench hearing the appeal.
Around 25-26 lakh voters have been deleted from the rolls; of these, roughly 23-25 lakh are awaiting a decision from the Tribunal. April 22 has been set as the last date to approach the Tribunal.
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