Bengal SIR tribunals flag Election Commission portal gaps: Indian Express

West Bengal SIR tribunal judges have flagged gaps in the Election Commission's digital portal. The problems are slowing appeals and limiting the relief tribunals can provide, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

More than a dozen judges raised the concerns during an August 11 meeting, according to minutes accessed by the newspaper. The issues were communicated to the Election Commission and the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court.

The judges said the portal did not provide a mechanism to serve notices directly to parties. Tribunals were instead sending emails through district magistrates and district election officers, but the response was poor, the report said.

The portal also did not allow tribunals to upload additional documents submitted by appellants or hold virtual hearings. Judges said they could not restore a deleted voter through the system, even when restoration was required by a judicial order.

Appellants could not download tribunal orders or certified copies from the portal, according to the report. This prevented voters from accessing the reasons for their inclusion or deletion from the electoral rolls.

The judges also flagged uncertainty over appeals filed physically with district officials. They warned that the absence of a system to digitise and track those appeals could deny citizens access to the proper appellate process.

The Supreme Court had said on April 6 that physically filed appeals should be digitised and uploaded to the ECINET platform at the earliest. An earlier April 1 order required tribunals to communicate reasons and revisit records before deciding appeals, The Indian Express reported.

The report said one tribunal judge had written to the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court on May 22 about the missing notice mechanism. The judge said the problem was affecting the pace of disposal and questioned the accuracy of appeal-disposal figures attributed to Election Commission sources.

The tribunals were created after the Supreme Court ordered a special appellate process for voters affected by the Bengal SIR. The Election Commission notified 19 single-member tribunals headed by retired High Court judges on March 20.

The SIR process resulted in the deletion of 27.16 lakh electors after judicial officers examined cases flagged for document discrepancies. The Election Commission told the Supreme Court in September that 38.31 lakh appeals had been filed, but only 1.26 lakh were disposed of by September 10.

Of the total, 22.21 lakh appeals were filed by voters whose names had been deleted. Another 16.10 lakh challenged the inclusion of names in the rolls, according to the figures reported by The Indian Express.

The newspaper said it sought responses from the Election Commission and the Registrar General of the Calcutta High Court on October 1. Neither had responded when the report was published.