The Trinamool Congress said on Friday that the Supreme Court’s order to deploy serving and retired judicial officers to take the final call on the inclusion or exclusion of names after document verification in the ongoing SIR drive amounted to the demolition of the Election Commission’s arrogance.

“Today marks a historic demolition of @ECISVEEP’s bloated arrogance. The CEC (Gyanesh Kumar) once strutted around like an untouchable overlord, convinced his word was final. That delusion has been shattered into oblivion,” Trinamool wrote on its official X handle, with a statement of party MP Kalyan Banerjee, who had fought the case in the court as a lawyer of chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

The Supreme Court on Friday also flagged a “trust deficit” between the Bengal government and the EC before delivering what Trinamool termed a “historic” judgment, under which the SIR process would be led by judicial officers, instead of electoral registration officers (EROs) appointed by the poll panel.

“Roll observers had been stonewalling and parking legitimate claims, all while plotting to erase legitimate voters in a bid to rig the game for their political masters. But the Supreme Court just delivered the knockout punch. 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,” read the Trinamool post, claiming that the Supreme Court’s verdict was a blow to the EC that had allegedly abandoned its sacred constitutional duty and morphed into a partisan body serving the BJP’s vested interests.

In another post, Trinamool hailed MP Abhishek Banerjee, who had recently flagged concerns by sharing WhatsApp chat screenshots allegedly showing how a special roll observer had instructed poll officials to remove names of legitimate voters without following due process, in violation of the Supreme Court’s earlier order.

Trinamool further claimed that following the concerns raised by Mamata’s nephew, the Supreme Court directed that judicial officers appointed by the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court shall adjudicate all cases relating to claims, objections, and “logical discrepancies”.

A Trinamool source said the party viewed the Supreme Court’s order positively, as the EC’s observers would lose their authority over state officials. If judicial officers take the final call, the EC would no longer be able to take action against state government officials whom they had allegedly been threatening, said
the party.

While Trinamool described the order as a victory for the people of Bengal and a blow to the EC, particularly chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the BJP claimed that the appointment of judicial officers was actually a loss of face for the state government.

According to the BJP, the verdict proved that the EROs and AEROs — who are state government officials — had failed to complete the process.

“The Supreme Court clearly said that the state government had failed to provide eligible Group A officials. If those officials had been appointed, they could have spoken in Bengali and cleared doubts regarding voters’ names. But Mamata Banerjee intentionally did not provide those officials. Despite beginning later than in Bengal, the SIR process was completed in Gujarat,” said Union minister of state Sukanta Majumdar, who is also a former BJP state president.

The CPM and the Congress, however, claimed that the appointment of judicial officers had exposed the failure of both the state government and the EC.

CPM state secretary Md Salim came down on the Mamata government and the EC for “messing up” an exercise the poll panel had described as “routine”.

“The extent of the state government’s inefficiency and the Election Commission’s capability is so huge that the Supreme Court had to appoint judicial officers to complete the SIR hearing process.... Such is the inability of these two institutions that the judiciary had to step in. This is the executive ceding its space to the judiciary. This is unwarranted. It is time for the state government, the office of the Bengal CEO and the Election Commission to publicly accept their responsibility for their grand show of inefficiency,” Salim told journalists.

Bengal Congress president Subhankar Sarkar said the verdict reflected a complete breakdown of the state administrative machinery. “This is the result of a sustained violation of constitutional processes for which both the Election Commission and the Bengal government are responsible,” Sarkar said in a statement.