The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Election Commission to provide details of cases disposed of and pending before appellate tribunals hearing challenges to voter deletions during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana was hearing a plea by Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury seeking faster disposal of SIR-related appeals.
"You need to give us the quantum of disposals so far because just filing an appeal is not enough. What is happening to the appeal also has to be seen," Justice Bagchi said.
The court said it wanted to assess how many appeals had actually been decided by the tribunals.
Court separates PDS issue from SIR appeals
During the hearing, Chowdhury's counsel raised concerns over people allegedly being denied public distribution system (PDS) benefits after their names were deleted from electoral rolls.
The bench, however, said the issue could not be clubbed with the plea concerning the functioning of the SIR appellate tribunals. It directed the petitioner to raise the PDS-related grievance before the Calcutta High Court.
"If you enlarge the scope of your petition to PDS, we will not be able to entertain it. It has to go to the high court. But if you are on monitoring of the appellate tribunals, we will consider looking at it. We are of the firm opinion that whether the State of West Bengal uses deletion of the SIR data to deny PDS to individuals is a different cause of action. It has to go before the Calcutta High Court," Justice Bagchi said.
SC focuses on tribunal disposals
The court said the immediate concern was the number of appeals being disposed of rather than the question of individual deletions.
"You need to rethink the entire architecture of the appellate tribunal. There are things like online access to judges. There are a lot of futuristic things also which can be done. But the main issue is the quantum of disposals. We are not on deletion or non-deletion. We are on the quantum of disposals," Justice Bagchi told the Election Commission.
The bench issued notice to the poll panel and agreed to list the matter on August 25 alongside similar cases.
Tribunals were set up on SC's direction
On March 10, the Supreme Court had ordered independent appellate tribunals headed by former high court judges to hear appeals against exclusions from West Bengal's voter lists during the SIR exercise.
It had also allowed trial court judges from West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand to deal with SIR-related complaints.