SIR in WB: SC refuses to entertain state's objection to training module for judicial officers

The Supreme Court said on Friday that it knows its judicial officers and they will not be "influenced by anything", after the West Bengal government submitted that the Election Commission had issued a training module for judicial officers deployed in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for West Bengal, mentioned the matter before a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi. "Something strange has happened. While your lordships passed the order that all the modalities will be settled by the chief justice (of the Calcutta High Court) and the committee, what they have done is, behind the back, they have issued directions to the judicial officers and issued a training module saying this is what they should accept and this is what they should not accept," Sibal told the bench. The CJI said the judicial officers deployed for the exercise in the state would take a call. "We can't hear like this. There has to be an end to it. We know our judicial officers, and they are not to be influenced by anything," the CJI said, adding that the court has made it very clear what documents are to be looked into. "Our orders are as clear as daylight," Justice Bagchi said.

The bench said neither the poll panel nor the state government would go beyond the orders passed by the apex court in the matter. Dismayed over the ongoing tussle between the West Bengal government and the Election Commission, the top court on February 20 issued an "extraordinary" direction to deploy serving and former district judges to assist the poll panel in the controversy-ridden SIR of electoral rolls in the state. On February 24, the top court allowed the deployment of West Bengal civil judges, in addition to 250 district judges, and the requisitioning of judicial officers from Jharkhand and Odisha to handle 80 lakh claims and objections of those facing deletion from the electoral roll in the ongoing SIR exercise in the state.