TMC tells Supreme Court: Voter deletions in SIR exceeded BJP’s win margin in 31 WB seats

New Delhi: All India Trinamool Congress on Monday claimed before the Supreme Court that deletions in electoral rolls due to special intensive revision materially affected results in certain assembly constituencies of West Bengal.

Appearing on behalf of Trinamool members, senior advocate Kalyan Bandhopadhyay made this claim before a bench of CJI Surya Kant and justice Joymalya Bagchi. He stated that in 31 seats, the winning margin of BJP candidates over Trinamool was less than the number of voters deleted during SIR’s ‘adjudication’ process. He claimed that, in several cases, the number of deletions and the loss margin were almost the same.

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He submitted that the number of voters deleted during the SIR exercise exceeded the vote difference between winning BJP candidates and losing Trinamool candidates in the polls.

To buttress his claim, Bandhopadhyay referred to the election result from the Jangipara constituency, where BJP candidate Prasenjit Bag defeated Trinamool leader Snehasis Chakraborty by 862 votes. He pointed out that more than 5,000 voters were deleted during the SIR process. He further claimed that the overall vote gap between Trinamool and BJP was nearly 32 lakh votes, while around 35 lakh appeals were pending before the appellate tribunals.

The senior lawyer also referred to an earlier oral observation made by justice Bagchi that if the victory margin was less than the number of deleted voters, the matter may require judicial scrutiny. Bandhopadhyay urged the court to intervene in cases where election results may have been impacted by large-scale voter deletions, which are still under challenge before tribunals.
Also Read: West Bengal Chief Election Officer Manoj Agarwal appointed state’s chief secretaryThe bench, however, observed that a separate application would need to be filed to raise issues concerning the election results.

The senior lawyer also apprised the bench that former Calcutta High Court chief justice TS Sivagnanam had resigned as a member of the appellate tribunal. “What can we do? We can’t compel anyone…” CJI Kant orally remarked. The CJI added the court’s priority will be to ensure that the appeals are decided in an expeditious manner.