NEW DELHI: With nearly 34 lakh appeals pending adjudication before SIR appellate tribunals against deletion of voters’ names in West Bengal, Supreme Court Tuesday decided to take stock of their performance and suggested they speed up their work, saying the process cannot be unending, even though it was unwilling to set a deadline for decision on appeals.“The process cannot be so slow that the next assembly elections would be due by the time the appeals are decided,” said CJI Surya Kant responding to a petition complaining about the slow rate of disposal of appeals by those whose names were deleted from electoral rolls during their Special Intensive Revision (SIR).Petitioner and Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, through senior advocate Rauf Rahim said the progress in deciding appeals by the tribunals, set up on SC orders, is painfully slow and requires impetus to speed up disposal rate. Chowdhury said names of lakhs of poor people have been deleted from the voter list in Murshidabad and they do not have the wherewithal to approach SC.A bench of CJI Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana said, “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.”“Once we get the statistics, we would be able to provide it with guidance and information technology to help speed up the process,” Justice Bagchi said. The bench asked Election Commisson to give details of pendency and disposals by Aug 25, the next date of hearing.
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When Rahim said appeals are required to be decided early as WB govt has begun depriving deleted voters of benefits of welfare schemes, the bench said this is altogether a separate cause of action which should be adjudicated by Calcutta High Court. “If you expand the scope of this petition, we will send it to HC,” it said and declined to fix a timeline for disposal of appeals.Chowdhury said, “Several people whose names are deleted from voter lists have made appeal before the tribunals and are waiting for the fate of their cases. But the process and infrastructure of the tribunals is not sufficient for early disposal of such a huge number of appeals after giving proper opportunity of hearing.”
