Kolkata, February 22 – The full-fledged judicial adjudication of claims and objections arising from the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the election-bound state of West Bengal will begin on Monday, and the process will commence with the involvement of 150 session judges appointed by the Calcutta High Court.
A total of 250 judicial officers have been involved in the system, and the process of judicial adjudication will be overseen at the district level by a three-member committee appointed by the Calcutta High Court in each district.
The process will begin on Monday, with 150 session judges, and the remaining will be involved as needed.
Each such supervisory committee will consist of one district judge, the district magistrate (who is also the district electoral officer), and the relevant district police officer.
"The focus will be on completing the process of verifying cases categorized as 'logical discrepancy' cases that have been referred for verification by the judicial officers by or before February 28," said an insider from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal.
As of now, it has been decided that the final voters' list in West Bengal will be published on February 28, minus those voters' documents that will be referred to the judicial officials for adjudication, and supplementary lists will be published accordingly later.
An emergency meeting at Jeshop Bhavan in North Kolkata, with judges and representatives of the Election Commission, began on Sunday at 11:30 a.m., where the outline of the hearing procedure, document verification, and settlement within the timeframe will be finalized.
At the time the report was filed, the meeting was in progress, and it is likely to continue for some time. The briefing and training of the judicial officers engaged in the process will be completed by Sunday night, so that the full-fledged judicial adjudication of the voters' documents can begin from Monday.
As of now, it has been estimated that the judicial adjudication will be for approximately 45 lakh to 50 lakh voters' documents, all of which were categorized as "logical discrepancy" cases, including those with unusual family data detected during the course of "progeny mapping."
