Calcutta HC cancels leave till march 9 for judicial officers on SIR work; 173 picked to dispose of 45L

KOLKATA: Tasked with adjudicating about 45 lakh disputed SIR cases, Calcutta High Court administration on Saturday cancelled the leaves of all senior district judges till March 9. Around 23 district judges and 150 senior judges will dispose of the cases under CCTV coverage. The judges are expected to begin work on Monday.

Late evening, the high court registrar general provided Bengal govt with an initial district-wise list of 95 judges for SIR work. Most of the judges have been deputed in North and South 24 Parganas (13 each) and Murshidabad (8), given the high SIR pendency in these districts.

The HC order cancelling leaves except in medical emergency, unprecedented in recent times, came after Chief Justice Sujoy Paul chaired a meeting with senior state and Election Commission officials on Supreme Court’s directive. The meeting was attended by CEO Manoj Agarwal, chief secretary Nandini Chakravorty, DGP Peeyush Pandey, Kolkata Police commissioner Supratim Sarkar, Vijay Pandey (EC’s DG of Law), registrar general of Calcutta HC, advocate general and additional solicitor general.




CEO Agarwal said, “Primarily, 45 lakh disputed cases have been identified by the micro-observers. However, this figure may change as the portal for scrutiny of documents and disposal will close Saturday midnight. We will compile district and assembly constituency-wise cases and submit these to the HC before Sunday noon.”

EC sources said, in the bulk of these cases, the microobservers have flagged discrepancies such as uploading of blank or illegible pages, absence of family relationship documents and conflicting dates of birth across different documents, among others.

Agarwal said the EC has requested one judicial officer per assembly constituency. “They will start reaching the districts Sunday and are expected to begin work Monday,” he said and added that the Commission will stick to its Feb 28 deadline of publishing the first voters’ list. “All cases cleared by Feb 26 or 27 will be included in the list to be published on Feb 28. The remaining cleared cases will be included in a supplementary list,” he said.

The EC is developing a simple portal for the judicial officers and creating login IDs for them. Micro-observers and state govt officers already deputed with the EC will assist the judges. CCTVs will be installed both inside and outside the rooms where the judicial officers will work.

According to sources, at Saturday’s meeting with the Chief Justice, state and EC officials differed over which former chief justices or judges will oversee the judicial officers.

The Commission objected to some names in the state’s list of seven former justices, stating that a few of them have held or are currently holding positions in different state panels or other govt departments after retirement.

On Friday, the Supreme Court, in an “extraordinary” order had directed that “serving judicial officers, along with some former judicial officers of impeccable integrity in the rank of district judges/ additional district judges, can be requested to revisit and dispose of the pending claims under the category of ‘logical discrepancy/unmapped category’ in each district.”



(With inputs from Subrata Chattoraj in Kolkata)