The Trinamool Congress claimed on Monday before the Supreme Court that in 31 Assembly constituencies in West Bengal, the winning margin of the Bharatiya Janata Party was less than the number of persons deleted during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, Live Law reported.
In many cases, the number of persons removed and the margin of the TMC’s defeat were almost the same, lawyer and party MP Kalyan Bandopadhyay told a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi.
The bench told the party that former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and others were free to file fresh applications in connection with these allegations, PTI reported.
Bandopadhyay claimed that in one constituency, a candidate lost by 862 votes, while 5,432 persons were removed from the rolls.
On the whole, the vote gap between the BJP and TMC was nearly 32 lakh, while close to 35 lakh appeals against adjudications are pending before appellate tribunals as part of the revision process, Live Law quoted him as saying.
Also read: In half the seats BJP won in Bengal, total SIR deletions outnumber victory margin
The Election Commission, however, contended that the appropriate course of action for the Trinamool Congress in such cases would be to file election petitions. To this, the TMC MP urged the court to pass an order stating that deletions during the special intensive revision would also constitute grounds for filing an election petition, according to the legal news website.
However, Kant asked: “How can we pass such an order?”
Bandopadhyay referred to an earlier verbal observation by Bagchi that if the loss margin was less than the deletions on account of the voter roll revision, the court would look into it, The Indian Express reported.
Bagchi said that he would have to file separate interlocutory applications to argue his points in such cases.
“We can only improve the mechanism for adjudication of the appeals,” Kant remarked, according to The Indian Express.
The BJP won 207 constituencies in the West Bengal elections, while the Trinamool Congress won 80 seats.
The special intensive revision of voter rolls was carried out before the elections.
Final rolls published in February initially excluded more than 61 lakh voters, with the process continuing through supplementary lists and adjudication of about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases.
By April 6, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of the electorate before the process began, had been removed. Lakhs of cases challenging their removal from the voter list are pending before appellate tribunals.
The Trinamool Congress had accused the Election Commission of arbitrarily deleting large numbers of voters through the special intensive revision exercise and had approached the Supreme Court against it.
Edited by Sneha
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