West Bengal SIR: Supreme Court will not set deadline to decide appeals even as State flags 20 lakh exclusions after review

The Supreme Court on Monday was told that about 55 per cent people of the 60 lakh people whose names were removed from the electoral rolls in West Bengal stand excluded even after adjudication of claims and objections by judicial officers deployed for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the State.

The submission was made by Senior Advocate Shyam Divan before a Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipin Pancholi during the hearing of petitions challenging the legality of the ongoing SIR in West Bengal.

Divan said the judicial officers have to be complimented as over 60 Lakh cases have been decided by them.

"Out of these 60 lakh cases, available data of 40 lakh cases indicates that the inclusion rate is about 55 percent which is 24 Lakhs and the exclusion rate is 45 percent which is 20 Lakh. The rejection rate appears to be very high despite the judicial safeguards… These were mapped individuals. Almost 7 lakh have already filed and several lakh appeals are in process of being filed. Appellate tribunals are yet to be fully operational," Divan, who appeared for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, added.

Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the State of West Bengal, said that the appellate tribunals should pass interim orders for those prima facie found wrongly excluded.

However, the Court declined to do the same and also refused to set any deadline for appellate tribunals to decide the appeals.

Justice Bagchi said that the electoral list needs to be frozen now in view of the upcoming elections.

"Tribunals will go on hearing and we do not want to rush it, but we need to freeze the list somewhere. One layer of adjudication is done by the judicial officers. Appellate process can take a month or even 60 days, but just because they are mapped does not mean..." the judge said.

The Court said that the 19 appellate tribunals comprise former chief justices and judges and thus it would leave the decision to them.

"We will leave it to the appellate tribunals," CJI Kant said.

The Court also directed that a committee be constituted for devising a procedure for the adjudication of appeals.

"We feel that to arrive at uniformity of procedure adopted before the 19 appellate tribunals. Thus, we request the Chief Justice of the High Court to constitute a team of three former senior most chief justices or judges who shall prescribe the procedure which will be mandatorily followed by all 19 tribunals uniformly. Let the committee prescribe the procedure by tomorrow so that adjudication of appeals can be expedited," it said.

During the hearing, CJI Kant noted that as of this afternoon, 59.15 lakh objections were decided by the judicial officers against the total pendency of 60.06 lakh. The adjudication process will be complete today.

"The letter says in Malda, which had 8 lakh objections, nothing remains pending despite so many difficulties such as gherao etc. A bottleneck which has emerged is the realtime e-signatures upload, which is affecting timely closure," CJI Kant said, referring to the information sent by Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Sujoy Paul.

Justice Bagchi also highlighted certain issues that have arisen before the appellate tribunals.

"There have been certain cases where documents could not be uploaded online. Then with no receipt...this issue will again be agitated next before a constitutional court and have the matter remanded. Whoever makes an appeal has raised a grievance that they don't know the reason. You can tell the tribunal to reveal the records," he said.

In its order, the Court said that the alleged non-availability of reasons for rejection by adjudicating officers would be raised before the appellate tribunals by those whose names are deleted from the voter list.

"We request the appellate tribunals to revisit the full record including reasons given by judicial officers and that tribunals can form their own process to adjudicate and arrive at their own process," it added.

Justice Bagchi said that the electoral list needs to be frozen now in view of the upcoming elections.

However, Divan contended that a supplementary list must be published after decision of appellate tribunals. At this, CJI Kant said,

"Let the former chief justices and judges evolve their own procedure."

Senior Advocate Kalyan Bandopadhyay said that the names being cleared by the tribunal till April 21 should be allowed to vote in the elections. However, Justice Bagchi said,

"Appeal is an adjudicatory process on natural justice...appeals will cross lakhs... 19 tribunals put on deadline will create chaos."

Bandopadhyay also remarked that the ECI had become the 'Exclusion Commission of India'.

In response, Senior Advocate DS Naidu for the ECI said,

"Less said the better about you."