Supreme Court to hear Mamata Banerjee's SIR challenge in Bengal today
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's plea on Monday challenging the Election Commission of India's (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls ahead of state polls.
A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and N.V. Anjaria, will consider Banerjee's petition alongside similar ones from Trinamool Congress MPs Dola Sen and Derek O'Brien.
Banerjee questions the SIR's legality, accusing the ECI of political bias. She claims the process targets marginalized voters, especially women changing surnames post-marriage and those shifting residences, leading to deletions of lakhs of names under the "logical discrepancy" category. She seeks interim orders halting such deletions and notes no similar revisions in states like Assam despite her repeated pleas.
In the prior hearing, the court issued notice to the ECI and remarked that spelling variations from local dialects are widespread and cannot justify excluding genuine voters. The bench assured a "practical solution" to protect bonafide voters' rights.
Ahead of the hearing, West Bengal offered 8,505 Group-B officers for SIR duties, insisting on Bengali-speaking staff to minimize language issues.
The ECI countered that only certificates from District Magistrates, Additional District Magistrates, Sub-Divisional Officers, or Kolkata Collectors (per 1999 provisions) qualify as valid ID, not those from public representatives or Block Development Officers. TMC slammed this as deliberate exclusion of genuine voters.
(Inputs from IANS)
