NEW DELHI: Calling the issues raised by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in her challenge to the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state as “genuine”, the Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Election Commission on her plea and sought their response by next Monday.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi issued notices and sought replies to the petition by February 9 from the Election Commission and the chief electoral officer of West Bengal.
The CJI asked the poll panel to instruct booth-level officers and electoral roll officers to be more sensitive while issuing notices on grounds of minor discrepancies such as mismatched spelling of names, etc.
Regarding the issue of micro-observers, the bench said that if the state government can give a list of Group B officers who can be spared for the SIR duties, then micro-observers can be removed.
The Chief Justice also asked the EC to instruct its officers to act in a sensible manner over notices issued over name-spelling mismatches to renowned authors. Prominent citizens of the state, including Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, acclaimed Bengali poet Joy Goswami, and three-time Trinamool Congress MP Dipak Adhikari, alias Dev, received summons.