NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued an important clarification in the ongoing Special Intensive Review (SIR) process in West Bengal by directing that the Class 10 Madhyamik admit cards will not be a separate document for lineage mapping with the 2002 lists but must be submitted along with the Class 10 pass certificate.
The clarification was given by a bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant based on an urgent reference given by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
“In the February 24 order, Paragraph 3(iii) has been further clarified to the effect that a Class 10 Madhyamik admit card can be produced along with a Madhyamik pass certificate for the purpose of verifying date of birth and pedigree of voters,” the bench, also comprising Justices Joymalia Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi, said.
In its February 24 order, the court allowed the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court to summon judicial officers from the neighboring states of Jharkhand and Odisha, as well as 250 serving and retired district judges/additional district judges from West Bengal, to adjudicate nearly 5 million claims and objections of unidentified voters classified as “reasonable inconsistency”.
Senior advocate Dhamma Sisadari Naidu, appearing for the EC, told the court that the order gave the impression that the admit card could be an “independent” document. At best, he said, the admit card could “supplement” the pass certificate, not “replace” it.
“The judicial officials in West Bengal know that Madhyamik admit card holds an important place for unassigned voters as it bears the father’s name. Unlike pass certificates in Bihar which contain date of birth, in West Bengal, to link an unspecified category voter to the particulars given (in the 2002 list), Madhyamik admit card will be vital. We are only saying that the pass certificate should be supplemented with the admit card,” the bench said.
The court also clarified that the documents uploaded as per its February 24 order must be submitted by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) or assistant EROs to the judicial officer presiding over claims in each district by 5pm on Thursday.
The court said on Tuesday that all documents submitted up to February 14 (the last date for submitting documents supporting claims) whether physically or electronically must be referred to the judicial officer. However, it did not set any timetable for doing so. The court issued the clarification given the need to quickly adjudicate claims during the SIR process.
The court had allowed the EC to publish its final list on February 28, and exercised its extraordinary power under Article 142 of the Constitution of India to grant all supplementary lists published after this date “deemed” to have been published on February 28.
On February 20, the court had allowed the deployment of judicial officials in West Bengal to adjudicate the claims of nearly 8 million voters out of 13.6 million people who issued notices under the category of logical inconsistency. This was done as an “exceptional” measure given the “lack of trust” between the state and ECI.
The logical contradiction includes electors assigned to more than six offspring; Age gaps of less than 15 years with parents; Individuals over 45 years of age were missing from the 2002 lists; The lack of correspondence in the names of fathers between the 2002 and 2005 lists; Age gaps of less than 40 years with grandparents; Age gaps of more than 50 years with parents; And gender non-conformity with the 2002 list.
