The Supreme Court on Tuesday told the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice to enlist, if necessary, the services of judicial officers from the neighbouring states of Odisha and Jharkhand for the verification of voter identity so that the post-SIR final rolls of Bengal can be published on February 28.
The apex court passed the direction after receiving a report from Chief Justice Sujoy Paul of the high court that if each of the 250 judicial officers who had been deployed from within Bengal attended to 250 cases per day, it would take another 80 days to dispose of the 50 lakh cases being scrutinised for “logical discrepancies” and those in the “unmapped category”.
The top court rejected the Bengal government’s apprehension that judicial officers from Odisha and Jharkhand may not be conversant with Bengali. The state was represented by senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee.
The bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant said the two states were part of the erstwhile Bengal Presidency, and therefore such a problem might not crop up.
The written order passed by the bench, which included Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi, said the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice had highlighted the “enormity of the exercise to be undertaken in verification of approximately 50,00,000 cases of ‘logical discrepancy/ unmapped category’”.
The Supreme Court took note of the “time constraints” and ordered that the “catchment area of judicial officers” be increased. It passed the following directions:
- In addition to the judicial officers already assigned the task, the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court will be entitled to draw officers from the ranks of civil judge (senior division) and civil judge (junior division) having experience of not less than three years This will ensure that an “adequate and reasonable pool” is created to undertake the pending verification work "on a war footing".
- If the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice feels that further human resources will be required to complete the process, “he is at liberty to approach” the Chief Justices of the high courts of Jharkhand and Odisha seeking servingor former judicial officersfor the verification work in Bengal
- The travel, boarding, honorarium and other incidental expenses of such officers shall be borne by the Election Commission of India. “The learned Chief Justices of the Jharkhand and Orissa High Courts are requested to sympathetically and urgently consider any request that may be made by the Hon’ble Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court in this regard”
- If the verification exercise cannot be completed by February 28, the EC can go ahead and publish the final list and follow it up with supplements. “Such supplements shall be published on a continuous basis as soon as the pending exercise is completed in part or in full”.
The matter will be heard again on March 10.