The number of voters deleted during the West Bengal Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll exceeded the vote difference between a winning BJP candidate and a losing TMC candidate in the recently concluded State Assembly polls, Senior Advocate Kalyan Banerjee told the Supreme Court on Monday.
The Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing petitions challenging the SIR exercise in West Bengal.In his submissions, Banerjee referred to the election result from the Jangipara constituency, where the BJP's Prasenjit Bag won the election, beating TMC leader Snehasis Chakraborty by 862 votes.Banerjee pointed out that over 5,000 voters were deleted because of the SIR - far higher than the vote difference of 862.
The senior lawyer called for some sort of court intervention in such cases, where the election results are likely to have been impacted by large-scale voter deletions, which are still in the process of being challenged before appellate tribunals.
"My candidate lost by 862 votes, but 5,550 names were deleted. This Court had indicated that if the vote difference is less than deletion of names, then this court will look into it," Banerjee said.The Court, however, indicated that a separate application would have to be filed to raise issues about the election results."Whatever you want to say about results, about deletions etc. this requires an independent IA," said Justice Bagchi.Pertinently, during a hearing on April 13, Justice Bagchi had said that unless and until there is "enormous amount of voters excluded", the election results cannot be interfered with.
The Court had earlier refused to stay the SIR exercise, but had ordered the establishment of appellate tribunals, manned by retired judges, to hear challenges to voter deletions. Lakhs of voter deletions have been challenged before these appellate tribunals and remained pending even as the Assembly elections were being conducted. Only a minuscule number of people received relief from the tribunals before the polls took place.
One contesting candidate, Congress' Motab Shaikh, was cleared for inclusion in electoral rolls by Justice TS Sivagnanam - one of the retired judges manning the appellate tribunals. Shaikh eventually won the election from Farakka constituency, defeating BJP's Sudhir Chowdhury by more than 8,000 votes.Justice Sivagnanam resigned from appellate tribunal duties shortly after the Assembly polls concluded. This was also brought to the Court's notice in today's hearing by Senior Advocate Banerjee.
Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy weighed in by pointing out that it may be years before voters whose names were deleted from the voter list are given relief."There is a feeling that appellate tribunals will now take 4 years!" she said.Representing the Election Commission of India (ECI), Senior Advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu argued that election petitions will have to be filed on such issues.
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