West Bengal SIR | SC invokes Art 142 to include voters in electoral roll if appeals succeed before cut-off dates

Two days after declining interim voting relief and directing parties to approach tribunals, the Supreme Court has now, in its uploaded order, ensured that voters whose appeals succeed are not shut out of the electoral process.

A Bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi invoked Article 142 and directed that those whose appeals against deletion are allowed by the Appellate Tribunals before the cut-off dates of 21 April and 27 April, shall be given effect by issuing a supplementary revised electoral roll so that they can vote in the upcoming phases of polling.

The Bench also clarified that pending appeals “preferred by excluded persons shall not entitle them to exercise their right to vote”. 

The batch arises from petitions filed by individuals whose names had been deleted from the electoral roll and who had already preferred appeals before the Appellate Tribunals. They sought directions to restore their names to the electoral roll, including interim relief, to operationalise the Appellate Tribunals with proper online and offline mechanisms for filing appeals along with documentary evidence, and to set aside their placement in the Adjudication Deleted List as arbitrary, illegal and void. Dealing with these prayers, the Court said they run contrary to the scheme laid out by this Court, noting that upon verification by judicial officers, the petitioners were found “to be not genuine,” and that such verification “displaces the presumption of correctness” attached to their prior inclusion.

The order records that the appellate mechanism is now fully functional and notes that over 34 lakh appeals have already been filed and are required to be adjudicated by the Appellate Tribunals in accordance with the procedure laid down, including revisiting the full record and communicating reasons. This means that the successful appellants in appeals decided within the next five to nine days will be included in the supplementary revised electoral roll. The short timeline and the volume of appeals cannot guarantee that all appellants will be heard.  

Explaining why interim voting rights could not be granted, the Court observed that permitting such a course would “…effectively recreate the very state of affairs that existed prior to the entrustment of the verification exercise to the Judicial Officers,” which “cannot be permitted,” particularly when the judicial officers have completed what was described as a “truly herculean task.”