‘Under adjudication’: Why lakhs of voters in Bengal are in a race against time

While announcing the poll schedule for the West Bengal elections, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said the total number of electors eligible to cast their votes in the state was 6.44 crore.

After the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the EC on February 28 published the final electoral roll in West Bengal with 7.04 crore electors, of which 60.06 lakh were kept “under adjudication”.

The CEC’s statement Sunday made it clear that those under adjudication won’t be able to vote until their names are cleared by judicial officers.

“As per the orders of the Supreme Court, the learned judges, working under the direction of the High Court of Calcutta, will be bringing out the supplementary lists. And as and when the supplementary lists and names come out, they shall be included with the existing electors,” the CEC said.

On the orders of the Supreme Court on February 20, which is hearing a legal challenge to the EC’s SIR process, around 500 judicial officers have been appointed to go through these cases.

As and when they dispose of the cases, supplementary lists of names are to be published. As of now, no supplementary list has been published, although the court was informed last week that about 10 lakh cases have been disposed of.

In the normal course, electors can be added to the rolls until the last date for nominations, which is April 6 and April 9, for the two phases of the West Bengal elections. However, there is no precedent for the appointment of judges to review electoral eligibility cases.

In a first, the EC, in December last year, deployed 8,100 micro-observers, who were Central government employees, to review the decisions taken by the statutory authorities, the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant EROs.

While the SIR was underway in eight other states and three UTs, the EC only deployed micro-observers in West Bengal. The cases flagged by the micro-observers are now being assessed by the judicial officers, which also is a first and specific to West Bengal.