Kolkata, February 22 – As the deadline for the completion of the scrutiny phase of voter documents submitted during the hearing on claims and objections to the draft voter list in West Bengal has ended, uncertainty remains regarding the number of voter documents classified as "logical discrepancies" that need to be verified by the judicial officers, as instructed by a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court.
The deadline was on Saturday midnight, at 12:00.
At the meeting chaired by Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Sujoy Paul on Saturday, it was decided to appoint 250 judicial officers to oversee the adjudication of claims and objections arising from the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, which is heading towards elections. The meeting was attended by West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal, Chief Secretary Nandini Goswami, Acting Director General of Police Peeyush Pandey, State Advocate General Kishore Datta, and one Additional Solicitor General on behalf of the Union government.
"However, since the meeting ended on late Saturday evening, and the regular scrutiny was still ongoing, it was not possible to determine at the meeting the exact number of voter documents that would be referred to the judicial officers for adjudication," an insider from the CEO's office said.
He added that an estimate had been drawn that the number of voter documents to be referred for adjudication by the judicial officers would be approximately between 4.5 million and 5 million.
The CEO's office insider further said that Justice Paul, during the meeting, expressed doubts about completing such a large number of voter documents within a short period of time. He is likely to have a virtual meeting with the top official of the Election Commission of India (ECI) later in the day and seek further clarifications.
As of now, it has been decided that the final voter list in West Bengal will be published on February 28, as per schedule, minus those voter documents that need to be referred to judicial officials for adjudication, and supplementary lists will be published later accordingly.
On Saturday, the Calcutta High Court also issued a notification cancelling the leaves of all judicial officers in West Bengal until March 9 and directed those currently on leave to join their respective courts and offices by Monday. Emergency medical leaves were excluded from the notification that cancelled the leaves.
