TMC welcomes SC order on further deployment of judicial officers for SIR

On the Supreme Court’s earlier order authorising the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court to depute additional officers to the rank of Civil Judges (Senior and Junior division), the HC has made an addition, said senior advocate Kalyan Bandopadhyay.

According to one of the Trinamul Congress senior MPs and one of the attending lawyers in the SC on behalf of the party, the earlier SC order mentioned District and Additional District Judges. Now Senior and Junior Division Judges, with at least three years of experience can be appointed to hear cases with logical discrepancies.

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The Trinamul Congress has welcomed the SC order today, claiming the order a victory of what the state has been saying all through.

Today, in another decision, the SC said that the CJ of HC can pull serving or retired judicial officers of equivalent rank from the high courts of Jharkhand and Odisha. The Supreme Court further instructed that Aadhaar card and Madhyamik admit cards should be considered as valid proof of documents.

The decisions are a sort of victory for the state, which has been arguing in SC for these documents to be included as valid proof, which the ECI had rejected.

Welcoming the Supreme Court order, Trinamul Congress in its X handle wrote “The Hon’ble Supreme Court has once again stood firmly with democracy, laying bare@ECIVEEP’s incompetence and @BJP4India’s relentless attempts to harass and disfranchise the people of Bengal. Today’s verdict is a decisive affirmation of the constitutional right to vote and a clear reminder that electoral processes cannot be manipulated through administrative overreach or arbitrary standards.”

Welcoming the Supreme Court order, state finance minister and president of Trinamul Mahila Congress, Chandrima Bhattacharya said today’s order has exposed the incompetence of the Election Commission of India. From the very beginning, the ECI was working in tandem with the BJP to delete the genuine voters from the list. The total number of logical discrepancy cases has reached 1.36 crore while the cases still undecided has reached a staggering 50 lakh. The number of judicial officers available in Bengal is 250. So, at an optimistic disposal rate of 250 cases per officer per day, clearing the backlog will take 80 days. The 28 February publication deadline of the final list is therefore plainly unachievable, she said. She alleged that this crisis is entirely a creation of the ECI’s own making.

Kalyan Bandopadhyay further said in Delhi: “All the people who have submitted documents till 14th and the documents are with the EROs, the EROs can submit those documents with their comments. The presiding officers will take a call on them. Also, after the publication of the final list, supplementary lists will keep being published continually.”