The Supreme Court directed the Election Commission to freeze West Bengal's voter rolls and publish the supplementary list by midnight after noting that adjudication of claims from voters deleted during the Special Intensive Revision was nearly complete. The court refused to set a deadline for appellate tribunals, stressing the need to freeze the lists now.
A three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant noted on Monday that a communication from the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice indicated more than 59,15,000 of 60,06,675 cases had been decided as of April 6 till 12:04 pm.
The bench, also comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi, directed the Election Commission to publish the voters' supplementary list by midnight. Senior advocate D S Naidu, for the EC, said 26,000 cases for Phase 1 voters and 20,000-25,000 for Phase 2 would be finished that day.
Refusing to fix any deadline for appellate tribunals to decide appeals, Justice Bagchi said, "Tribunals will go on hearing and we do not want to rush it, but we need to freeze the list somewhere."
The court asked High Court Chief Justices to set up a team of three former senior-most judges to prescribe mandatory procedures for the 19 appellate tribunals. Congress candidate Md Mottakin Alam's name was ordered included in the Ratua seat voters' list by a tribunal hours before the nomination deadline, following a Supreme Court mention. A similar order came for Farakka candidate Mohtab Sheikh on Sunday.
On the April 1 gherao of judicial officers in Malda, the court invoked Article 142 to direct the NIA to take over FIRs from local police for probe, slamming the state administration. It ordered Chief Secretary Dushyant Nariala to apologise to the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice.
