From streets to the Supreme Court, Mamata takes on poll panel

Mamata Banerjee became the first Chief Minister to argue in the Supreme Court on Wednesday as she sought an intervention in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, alleging that West Bengal was being “targeted” and its people were being “bulldozed”. The CM referred to the poll panel as “WhatsApp Commission” in an apparent reference to directions being allegedly passed by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to electoral officials through the instant messaging app.

Banerjee, dressed in her signature white sari paired with a black scarf to resist the Capital’s winter, reached the SC premises flanked by her lawyers, including Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee, around 10 am. Appearing before Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi, the CM said she want five minutes to argue. CJI responded that “Madam, take 15 minutes.” The CM was permitted by the bench to supplement the submissions of her lawyer and senior advocate Shyam Divan.

Several lawyers and litigants jostled to enter the CJI’s courtroom to catch a glimpse of the CM making her arguments. “The problem is our lawyers always fought our case from the beginning but when everything is finished, we are not getting justice... We are not getting justice anywhere. I am a bonded labourer, sir... I am from a common family and I am not fighting for my party,” Banerjee said.

Banerjee said she wrote six letters to the ECI on the SIR issue but got no response. At the end of the hearing, she conveyed her gratitude to the bench for the opportunity to argue in person and urged it to “save democracy”.

Banerjee has challenged the SIR of electoral rolls in the state and sought a direction to the poll panel to “accept Aadhaar cards as proof of identity especially in cases of ‘logical discrepancy’ without insisting on any other documents”. Logical discrepancies cited while reconciling the rolls with the 2002 voter list include mismatches in a parent’s name or the age gap between a voter and their parent being less than 15 or more than 50 years.

Taking the issue further, the CM said in some cases people who were alive had been declared dead by the poll panel. “Their SIR process is only for deletion, not for inclusion,” she said.

She flagged difficulties being faced by citizens due to the exercise and said they were relieved that the court had earlier given a direction to include Aadhaar as one of the documents in the process. Banerjee alleged that despite the SC direction, the panel was not allowing Aadhaar and kept insisting on other documents. “In other States, documents like domicile certificate, family register card, etc are allowed... They are only targeting Bengal on the eve of elections. What was the hurry?” she asked.

She said the process, which usually takes two years, was being undertaken in a short span of three months even during the festival and harvesting season in the State. She also flagged the issue of deaths of officials involved in the exercise and deployment of micro-observers in the state.

Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the ECI, countered the charges and alleged that the She flagged that married women were being put to notice for shifting to their in-laws’ home or using their husbands’ surname. When the counsel objected to her submissions, CJI Kant interrupted, saying, “Madam has come all the way to speak.”During the hearing, the bench observed that “genuine persons must remain on the electoral roll”.

The CJI said every problem could be solved and it must be ensured that no innocent person was left out. Divan said in many cases, names of persons issued notices for logical discrepancies were misspelt and it could be rectified easily. The CJI referred to a Bengali dialect and observed that at times names could be misspelt in English because of it. The CJI asked the poll panel to instruct booth-level officers and electoral roll officers to be more sensitive while issuing notices on grounds of minor discrepancies such as mismatched spelling of names, etc.