Supreme Court’s order on SIR in Bengal, permission to call judicial officers of Jharkhand and Odisha

Considering the seriousness of the situation and paucity of time, the bench allowed civil judges to be deployed to conduct the process. It asked the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court to request his counterparts from Jharkhand and Odisha to call judicial officers of equal rank to deal with the situation.

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Election Commission will bear the expenses

It directed the Election Commission (EC) to bear the cost of deploying judicial officers from Jharkhand and Odisha. The top court also allowed the EC to publish the final electoral roll on February 28, and clarified that the poll panel can release a supplementary list as the verification process progresses. It used full powers under Article 142 to include voters in the supplementary electoral roll so that they can be part of the final list published by the poll panel on February 28.

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Logical differences in the children linked to the 2002 voter list include difference in names of parents and age difference between the voter and his parents being less than 15 years or more than 50 years. On February 20, frustrated by the ongoing tussle between the West Bengal government and the EC, the top court issued ‘extraordinary’ direction to depute sitting and former district judges to assist the poll panel in the controversy-ridden SIR process in the state. Expressing regret at the “unfortunate allegations and counter-allegations” and “trust deficit” between the EC and the ‘democratically elected’ Trinamool Congress government in Bengal, the bench issued a series of fresh directions to complete the SIR process.