Kolkata, February 21 – The Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court, Sujoy Paul, will chair a crucial meeting on Saturday to finalize the plan for appointing serving and retired 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 was directed by a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Friday.
The meeting, to be chaired by Justice Paul, will also be attended by the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, the Chief Secretary of West Bengal, Nandini Goswami, the acting Director General of Police, Peeyush Pandey, the Advocate General of West Bengal, Kishore Datta, and one additional solicitor general on behalf of the Union government.
According to the Supreme Court's order, the final voters' list in West Bengal will be published on February 28, excluding cases involving "logical discrepancies" that will be referred to judicial officers for adjudication.
Accordingly, the CEO of West Bengal had also assured the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, that the final voters' list would be published on February 28. Subsequently, supplementary lists would be published based on the recommendations of the judicial officers on those "logical discrepancy" cases that would be referred to them.
Political observers are viewing the Supreme Court's unprecedented order on Friday regarding the appointment of judicial officers for the revision exercise as a typical example of how increasing judicial involvement is becoming necessary in West Bengal in matters of procedural details, where political interests are allegedly prevailing over other aspects.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties in West Bengal have started claiming that the decision of the Supreme Court on the appointment of judicial officers for the adjudication of the revision exercise is a matter of shame for West Bengal, since similar orders from the Supreme Court were not called in for any other state or Union Territory, where parallel revision exercises are taking place.
Revision exercises are also taking place in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which are also going for Assembly polls this year, like West Bengal.
Since the beginning, the ruling Trinamool Congress had been opposing the revision exercise and claimed that the SIR was in reality a ploy of the Union Government and the BJP to implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in West Bengal and remove the names of genuine voters.
The party on Friday hailed the Supreme Court's intervention and said that all claims, objections, and logical discrepancy cases will now be handled by impartial judicial officers appointed by the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court.
On the other hand, the BJP had claimed that the reason why the Trinamool Congress had been opposing the SIR was that it aimed to retain the names of illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya voters in the list.