SC to hear on Monday pleas related to SIR of electoral rolls in West Bengal

New Delhi: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Monday a batch of pleas pertaining to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound West Bengal.

As per the apex court's cause list of April 13, the pleas would be heard by a bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi.

On April 10, the top court had agreed to hear on April 13 a fresh plea along with pending ones challenging the freezing of electoral rolls by the Election Commission ahead of the upcoming assembly polls in West Bengal.

The poll panel has frozen and finalised the electoral rolls on April 9 for the assembly seats which are going to polls in the first stage.

Assembly elections in West Bengal will be held in two phases on April 23 and 29 and votes will be counted on May 4.

The freezing of electoral rolls means that no new person, who has been deleted, can be added to the voters list for this assembly polls.

On Monday, the bench would also hear the suo motu case related to the 'gherao' of seven judicial officers engaged in the SIR exercise in West Bengal's Malda district.

While hearing the matter on April 6, the top court ordered the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to take over cases related to the 'gherao' of seven judicial officers in Malda, observing that the bureaucracy's credibility was being lowered and politics was being injected into the West Bengal secretariat and government offices.

The apex court had exercised its plenary power under Article 142 of the Constitution to transfer around 12 cases related to the April 1 incident, as rioting is not a scheduled offence under the NIA Act.

On April 6, the bench noted that around 60 lakh claims and objections of those removed from voters' lists in the SIR in West Bengal have been decided.

It had asked the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court to constitute a three-member panel of former senior judges to frame uniform procedures for 19 tribunals for deciding appeals against deletions from the electoral rolls.