The Supreme Court has declined to grant interim voting rights to those whose names were deleted during the voter roll clean-up process special intensive revision (SIR) and whose appeals are still pending before the appellate tribunals.
During the proceedings, Trinamool Congress leader Kalyan Banerjee said that at least 1.6 million appeals have been filed, and they should be allowed to vote in the two-phase assembly election due later this month.
In response, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant said, “That is entirely out of the question. If we were to permit this, then the voting rights of the individuals involved would have to be suspended.”
Justice Joymalya Bagchi said there are 3.4 million appeals in the SIR exercise, and added that a report submitted by the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice clearly stated this data.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has already frozen the Bengal voter list and no new name can be included before the election, unless the Supreme Court gives a specific direction on this count, which did not happen today. Nineteen appellate tribunals have been set up in the state bordering Bangladesh to decide the fate of 27 lakh cases that have been deleted in the judicial adjudication cases.