The Supreme Court will take up on Tuesday the petitions filed by some people from Bengal whose names were deleted from the final voter list published on February 28 after the special intensive revision of rolls.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi assured senior advocate Menaka Guruswamy, appearing for Omprakash Shaw and Bilkis Tarafdar, that the matter would be listed along with the scheduled hearing of other matters related to the SIR in Bengal, which had come under challenge from several others.

Initially, the CJI told Guruswamy that the two petitioners should have made a representation to the Election Commission before challenging the deletion of their names in the top court.

“You must understand that in the scheme of things, we cannot sit on an appeal over the decisions of the judicial officers,” the CJI observed.

Guruswamy, however, complained that the pleas pertained to the deletion of erstwhile voters from the rolls.

“These are electors. They had voted earlier and now their documents had not been taken into consideration,” the senior counsel said.

On February 24, the top court allowed the deployment of Bengal civil judges, in addition to 250 district judges, and the requisitioning of judicial officers from Jharkhand and Odisha to handle 80 lakh claims and objections of those facing deletion from the electoral rolls in the SIR drive.

It took note of a February 22 letter of Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Sujoy Paul that even if 250 district judges were deployed in the SIR exercise, it would
take around 80 days to deal with the claims and objections of those put under the “logical discrepancy” and “unmapped" categories.