The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a plea filed by a group of 13 people seeking its intervention in deleting their names from the electoral roll during the Special Institutional Review (SIR) in West Bengal, where polls for the first phase of assembly elections will be held on April 23.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi termed the petition “premature” and directed the aggrieved to approach the constituted appellate courts instead.
“Given that the petitioners (Quaraisha Yeasmin and others) have already approached the appellate tribunals… in our considered opinion, the concerns expressed in the petition are premature. If the petition is allowed, necessary consequences will follow,” the court said in its order, without commenting on the merits of the petition.
The cause of action alleged that the Electoral Commission was summarily erasing names without due process and that appeals against those erasures were not processed in a timely manner.
The Calcutta High Court has set up as many as 19 tribunals headed by former Chief Justices and HC judges to hear appeals against deletion of names of persons from electoral rolls.
Senior advocate DS Naidu, who appeared for the panel, informed the court that around 30,000 to 34,000 appeals are currently pending. “Each tribunal now has more than one million appeals pending,” the bench said.
The counsel for the petitioners argued that the EC had not issued the necessary orders to the relevant judicial authorities and that the “freezing date” of the electoral rolls should be extended.
“If I’m not allowed to argue, then what’s the point? Are these appeals going to be decided in some time frame, or are they just going to drag on?” the counselor asked.
During the hearing, Justice Bagchi referred to the sanctity of the electoral process and said that the right to vote was not just a constitutional formality but a “sentimental” pillar of democracy.
“The right to vote in the country you were born in is not just constitutional, it’s sentimental. It’s about being part of a democracy and helping to elect a government,” he said.
But he said tribunals staffed by former judges could not be overburdened by setting deadlines for decisions.
“It is not the end that justifies the means, but the means that justifies the end,” Justice Bagchi said.
“We have to protect due process rights. The voter should not be sandwiched between two constitutional agents,” he said, adding that he would not interfere with the election process at this stage.
Justice Bagchi noted that the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court had already formulated the manner and mode of the appeal, which began on Monday.
“Unless and until an enormous number of voters are excluded or it substantially affects the election… the election cannot be annulled,” the bench said, adding that the court’s intervention was to “enhance the election, not prohibit it.”
The CJI emphasized that the petitioners must exhaust their remedies before the appellate courts.
The assembly elections in West Bengal will be held in two phases on April 23 and 29 and the votes will be counted on May 4.
