Kolkata, February 24 – As the Supreme Court allowed judges from the High Courts of Jharkhand and Orissa to participate in the adjudication of voter claims and objections arising from the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, the development drew mixed reactions from various political parties in the state.
The ruling Trinamool Congress described the Supreme Court's order as a clear indication that the Election Commission of India (ECI) had effectively lost control over the conduct of the SIR process in West Bengal.
"In an unprecedented move today, the Supreme Court was compelled to allow the deployment of judges from neighboring states to address the massive bottleneck created by the Election Commission's sheer incompetence and administrative failure. This intervention itself speaks volumes," read a statement issued by Trinamool Congress immediately after the apex court order in the matter surfaced.
According to Trinamool Congress, the Supreme Court order "revealed the conspiracy on the part of the Commission to selectively target, intimidate, and harass voters in West Bengal."
Bharatiya Janata Party's West Bengal unit president and the party's Rajya Sabha member, Samik Bhattacharya, said that the Supreme Court's order had once again proven that without the court's intervention at every stage, a smooth completion of the SIR exercise would never be possible in the state.
"The parallel SIR exercise has been conducted in several other states and Union Territories. But West Bengal had been the only state where such constant controversies and disruptions of the exercise had surfaced. This is because neither the state government nor the state's ruling party wants the exercise to be smoothly concluded. This has become evident from the Apex Court’s order once and again before, and today the same thing has been again established,” Bhattacharya said.
At the time the report was filed, there was no reaction either from the CPI(M) or from Congress in the matter.
