Kolkata, March 19 – Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Sujoy Paul is scheduled to chair a crucial meeting on Thursday regarding the publication of the first supplementary list of voters referred for judicial adjudication, which falls under the “logical discrepancy” category.
The first supplementary list for this court is expected to be published on Friday, and the meeting, chaired by Justice Paul, is intended for a final review of the progress of the judicial adjudication process.
The meeting will be attended by, among others, the 732 judicial officers involved in the judicial adjudication process, including 100 each from neighboring Odisha and Jharkhand, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal, and his subordinate officers.
"The meeting is also meant to assess the law and order situation in West Bengal before the publication of the first supplementary list in this matter, with the apprehension that tension might erupt in different parts of the state after its publication," said a source in the CEO's office.
The final voters' list in West Bengal, excluding the 60 lakh cases referred for judicial adjudication, was published on February 28. It was decided that the supplementary lists would be published periodically as per the progress of the judicial adjudication exercise.
Of the 60 lakh voters in the state whose cases were referred for judicial adjudication, the process had been completed for 23.30 lakh voters by Wednesday night.
Out of these 23.30 lakh cases, for which the process of judicial adjudication has been completed, eight lakh voters have been identified as ineligible. This means that over 34 per cent of the voters whose adjudication process has been completed have been identified by judicial officers as ineligible.
The two-phase elections in West Bengal will be held on April 23 and April 29. In the first phase, polling will be held for 152 Assembly constituencies, and in the second phase, for 142 constituencies.
As of now, it has been decided that around 2,300 companies of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnel will be deployed for each of the two phases. Already, an advance deployment of 480 companies of CAPF for area domination had been completed.