Calcutta High Court on Thursday decided to seek 200 judicial officers — 100 each from Odisha High Court and Jharkhand High Court — to augment the pool of officers already appointed for adjudication of voters’ documents flagged under the “logical discrepancy” category.

The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court, Justice Sujoy Paul. The meeting, the third following the Supreme Court’s order, was attended by chief electoral officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal, chief secretary Nandini Chakravorty, director general of police Peeyush Pandey, Kolkata police commissioner Supratim Sarkar and special roll observer Subrata Gupta.

Gupta told reporters that around 200 judicial officers were expected to reach Bengal from Jharkhand and Odisha. “The exact number of such officers and the date of their arrival have not been finalised so far,” he said.

At the meeting, it was decided that the final number of “logical discrepancy” cases in the ongoing SIR drive, as determined at midnight on February 21, would be treated as the final figure for adjudication purposes. It was also decided that the IDs for all judicial officers from Jharkhand and Odisha would be prepared by Thursday evening. The logistics of their stay here have been finalised.

Another decision was that all documents submitted but not uploaded by February 14 would be uploaded by the Election Commission between Thursday and Friday. The commission will submit daily Assembly segment-wise reports to the Calcutta
High Court.

After the meeting, Agarwal said: “Now, there are 70,800,000 names on the list. The cases which are handled by the judicial officers will also be mentioned on the list.”

A division bench of the Supreme Court had on February 24 permitted judicial officers from the neighbouring high courts of Jharkhand and Odisha to be deputed to Bengal to expedite the adjudication of voter claims and objections arising from the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the poll-bound Bengal.

Agarwal said: “A total of 530 judicial officers from different courts in Bengal have been appointed for the adjudication of voters’ documents, and out of them, around 270 are currently engaged in the process. For the remaining officers, initiatives have been taken to create dashboards and OTP access. More officers will also join soon.”

With the addition of 200 more judicial officers from Odisha and Jharkhand, the adjudication process is expected to gain further momentum. The final voters’ list in Bengal, excluding cases of “logical discrepancies” that have been referred for judicial adjudication, will be published later. Supplementary lists will be issued later, depending on the progress of the scrutiny.