Petition in Calcutta HC seeks court-monitored SIR in Bengal

Kolkata: A petition has been filed in the Calcutta High Court on Friday, seeking a court-monitored Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal.

Calcutta High Court’s division bench of Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Smita Das De has admitted the petition.

The petitioner has also sought the court’s intervention so that the time period for conducting the revision exercise is extended.

At the same time, the petitioner has prayed for the Calcutta High Court’s direction to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to give a detailed explanation on why the SIR exercise is necessary.

The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, announced SIR for 12 states, including West Bengal, earlier this week. The first stage of the three-stage SIR exercise in West Bengal will start from November 4.

The draft list will be published on December 9, following which any political party or individual voter will be able to register their complaints on the draft list, which will be addressed by the ECI, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal.

Finally, on February 7 next year, the final voters’ list will be published by the ECI.

Trinamool Congress has already raised objections about the time period during which the SIR exercise will be conducted. The party general secretary and Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee, earlier this week, claimed that if the genuine objective was to prepare an error-free electoral roll, the revision should be conducted over an adequate period, not hastily.

“Their aim is not to make the voters’ list error-free. In reality, SIR stands for ‘Silent Invisible Rigging’. The last time such a revision was carried out in West Bengal, it took almost two years to complete the exercise. Now, they are claiming it will be completed in just two months,” he said.

The BJP, on the other hand, has claimed that Trinamool Congress’ opposition to the revision exercise was out of their fear that the names of illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya voters would be deleted from the voters’ list.

IANS