SC sets October 16 to hear West Bengal deleted voters’ appeals plea
The Supreme Court on Friday said it will hear on October 16 pleas of voters deleted from the electoral roll under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process in West Bengal for early disposal of their appeals against deletion.
The voters said alternatively they should be allowed to vote in the upcoming State civic polls in November.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana said they are aware of the difficulties faced by SIR tribunals and there are multi-faceted problems.
“We are trying to sort out these problems like the bulk of the appeals are of those who are seeking deletion of names of voters. We will be asking the tribunals to push back those appeals seeking deletion of names and decide first those which seek inclusion,” CJI Kant said.
Justice Bagchi said there is a problem with the software also and the court is looking to address those issues. Advocate Prashant Bhushan and senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for petitioners, said since 93 percent of appeals pending with SIR tribunals are allowed till now, the court may direct for expeditious disposal of pending appeals so that they can vote in civic polls.
Bhushan said these deleted voters are in a fix about whether they will be allowed to vote in the civic body polls, as they were not allowed to do so in the recent bypolls.
