Kolkata, Feb 21 The Calcutta High Court Chief Justice, Sujoy Paul, will chair a crucial meeting on Saturday to finalise the blueprint for appointment of serving, as well as retired judicial officers to oversee adjudication of claims and objections arising from the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound West Bengal, which was directed by a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court on Friday.
The meeting to be chaired by Justice Paul will be attended, among others, by the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, West Bengal Chief Secretary, Nandini Goswami, the acting state Director General of Police, Peeyush Pandey, West Bengal Advocate General, Kishore Datta, and one additional solicitor general on behalf of the Union government.
As per the apex court's order the final voters’ list in West Bengal will be published as scheduled on February 28, excluding cases involving "logical discrepancies" that will be referred to judicial officers for adjudication.
Accordingly, the CEO of West Bengal had also assured the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, that the final voters’ list will be published on February 28. Subsequently, supplementary lists would be published based on the recommendations of the judicial officers on those “logical discrepancy” cases that would be referred to them.
Political observers are viewing the apex court’s unprecedented order on Friday regarding the appointment of judicial officers for adjudication of the revision exercise as a typical example of how increasing judicial involvement is becoming necessary in West Bengal in issues about procedural details, where political interests are allegedly reigning over other aspects.
Meanwhile, the Opposition parties in West Bengal have started claiming that the decision of the apex court on the appointment of judicial officers for the adjudication of the revision exercise is a matter of shame for West Bengal, since similar orders from the apex court were not called in for any other state or Union Territory, where parallel revision exercises are taking place.
Revision exercises are also taking place in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which are also going for Assembly polls this year, like West Bengal.
Since the beginning, the ruling Trinamool Congress had been opposing the revision exercise and claimed that the SIR was in reality a ploy of the Union Government and the BJP to slap the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in West Bengal and remove names of genuine voters.
The party on Friday hailed the apex court’s intervention and said that all claims, objections, and logical discrepancy cases will now be handled by impartial judicial officers appointed by the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court.
On the other hand, the BJP had claimed that the reason why the Trinamool Congress had been opposing the SIR was that it aimed to retain the names of illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya voters in the list.
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