The Supreme Court on Monday held a landmark hearing on the deletion of the names of many voters from the electoral roll through the Special Exclusion Amendment (SIR) process during the recent West Bengal Assembly elections. The court said the election results were affected by the rate at which voters’ names were deleted from the rolls in several constituencies in the state. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Jayamalya Bagchi allowed the Trinamool Congress and Mamata Banerjee to file a fresh plea in the matter.
Advocate Kalyan Banerjee, representing the Trinamool Congress, had argued in the court that in about 31 assembly constituencies in West Bengal, more voters’ names had been omitted from the list than the win-loss margin. For example, he said that the Trinamool candidate lost by just 862 votes in one seat but the names of more than 5,000 voters were deleted from the list in the same seat. Also, the difference in votes between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress across the state was about 3.2 million, but the number of those whose names were deleted from the voter list was more than 3.5 million.
Senior advocate Menaka Guruswamy told the court that it would take about four years to dispose of the petitions at the current pace. In contrast, the Election Commission of India has rejected the Trinamool’s complaint, saying that any election-related dispute can be legally resolved only through an election petition. According to the Election Commission, separate cases cannot be filed after the election because there are clear provisions in the law.
The Supreme Court bench, however, noted that if the margin of victory is less than the number of votes cut off, those matters can be examined by the court. The bench also said that timely disposal of petitions is essential and the existing legal system can be improved. The BJP won 207 of the 294 seats and the Trinamool won 80 seats with over 90 per cent polling across the state. It remains to be seen what the court’s next step is in the election dispute.
post Irregularities in SIR process affect election results: Trinamool Congress case in Supreme Court appeared first Northeast Now (Assamese).
