Kolkata, Feb 20 (IANS) The Supreme Court’s order on Friday directing deployment of serving as well as retired judicial officers to oversee adjudication of claims and objections arising from the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound West Bengal has received mixed reactions from the political parties in the state.
Union Minister of State and former president of BJP’s West Bengal unit Sukanta Majumdar said that the Apex Court’s order on Friday is a matter of shame for West Bengal, since it proves that it is the only state where the revision exercise could not be completed peacefully without judicial intervention.
“Parallel SIR exercises are being conducted in so many states. But all the controversies over this revision exercise are only happening in West Bengal. This is because the state government and the state’s ruling party since the beginning had attempted to destabilise the revision exercise. This is a matter of shame for West Bengal,” Majumdar said.
Almost echoing him, former president of Congress’ West Bengal unit and five-time party Lok Sabha member, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said that the Apex Court would not have to give such an unprecedented order if the state government and the state’s ruling party had not created hindrances for the smooth conduction of the SIR exercise.
“In the current regime, West Bengal has been in the limelight for all negative reasons again and again, and this is the latest one,” Chowdhury said.
The ruling Trinamool Congress seems to be the most elated over the order of the Apex Court.
According to the four-time Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member and the senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee, the Apex Court’s order has demolished the belief of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, that he will only have the say in the SIR-related matters.
“The CEC used to think that he was the only one who knew everything. The Apex Court’s order today proved that wrong. Now, the decision of the judicial officers to be appointed by the Calcutta High Court to oversee the adjudication of the SIR exercise will be final. This is a unique order, and even this morning, I did not expect such an unprecedented order,” Banerjee said.
Youth CPI(M) leader and the party’s state committee member, Satarup Ghosh said that while he will not comment on the order of the Supreme Court, the only wish of his party was that the adjudication of the revision exercise under the supervision of the judicial officers are being carried out in a transparent manner, where the name of not a single genuine voter is deleted and the name of not a single fake voter is retained.
–IANS
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