NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked appellate tribunals hearing nearly 34 lakh appeals against the deletion of voters’ names in West Bengal to speed up the process, saying it cannot continue indefinitely.
The bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, said the disposal of appeals must not take so long that the next Assembly elections arrive before the cases are decided.
“The process cannot be so slow that the next assembly elections would be due by the time the appeals are decided,” CJI Kant said while hearing a petition challenging the slow disposal of appeals filed by voters whose names were deleted during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the petitioner, represented by senior advocate Rauf Rahim, told the court that the tribunals were disposing of appeals at a “painfully slow” rate and needed to accelerate the process.
Chowdhury also submitted that the names of lakhs of economically disadvantaged people had been removed from electoral rolls in Murshidabad and that many of them lacked the resources to approach the Supreme Court.
The bench noted that the tribunals had been constituted pursuant to its earlier orders and that sufficient time had passed to assess their functioning.
“These tribunals were constituted on our orders. A substantial time has elapsed since they started working. We must consider their performance keeping in mind the pendency and disposals. Immediate concern is to take stock,” the bench said.
Justice Bagchi said that once the court received detailed statistics on the tribunals’ workload and disposal rates, it could consider providing guidance and using information technology to accelerate the process.
The Supreme Court asked the Election Commission to submit details of the number of pending and disposed appeals by August 25, when the matter will next be heard.
