Judicial officers, tasked with disposing of roughly 45 lakh cases of voters pending owing to the lack of a consensus between the Election Commission and the electoral registration officers (EROs) and AEROs, could not start their work on Monday.
Reason: many of them did not get their login IDs and passwords.
Sources in the poll panel said that the process of creating login IDs and passwords was being carried out throughout the day. "Judicial officers started getting their IDs and passwords in the evening and the work can start in full swing from Tuesday," said a source.
On Monday, a virtual meeting was convened by Sujoy Paul, the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court, where the judicial officers raised questions before the CEO of Bengal, Manoj Agarwal, and other officials of the poll panel.
"The judicial officers wanted to clear some confusions. The EC officials explained everything about the process and it is expected that the work could commence smoothly from tomorrow (Tuesday). It was also decided at the meeting that the EC would submit a daily reports about the progress to the high court," said an official.
While efforts were initiated to start the process to dispose of pending cases, a section of the officials have wondered whether so many cases could be cleared before February 28, when the post-SIR rolls would be published according to a directive of the Supreme Court.
"It was decided that each of the Assembly segments would have one judicial officer to dispose of pending cases. A total of about 45 lakh cases would have to be cleared by a maximum of 294 judicial officers. It is humanly impossible to clear all these cases before February 28," said a source.
Sources said that the cases that would need to be cleared before the last day of publication of rolls would be included in the list. The remaining cases, which would be cleared later on, would be inserted in the rolls through supplementary lists.
Sources in the districts said that some of the judicial officers had visited block offices earlier in the day, and they wanted to know about the process from the EROs.
"They were briefed about the exercise and the process. Still they had some questions, which perhaps they had raised during the evening meeting," said a BDO.
A source in the poll panel said that the portal through which the cases would be disposed of was self-explanatory, which would help the judicial officials.
"Once the judicial officers get their login IDs and passwords, they will get to know everything about the process. They will have no problem in dealing with the pending cases as the mandate by the Supreme Court, as well as the EC, is very clear on the documents which would have to be accepted," said a poll panel source.