Voters deleted during WB SIR higher than winning margin: TMC's Kalyan Banerjee to Supreme Court
The Supreme Court said Mamata Banerjee and others could file fresh applications over electoral roll deletions in West Bengal.
The hearing centred on whether Special Intensive Revision disputes may have affected election results.
During a hearing on April 13, the Court had observed that unless and until there is "enormous amount of voters excluded", the election results cannot be interfered with.
The number of voters deleted during the West Bengal Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll exceeded the vote difference between a winning BJP candidate and a losing TMC candidate in the recently concluded State Assembly polls, Senior Advocate Kalyan Banerjee told the Supreme Court today.
The Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing petitions challenging the SIR exercise in West Bengal.
In his submissions, Banerjee referred to the election result from the Jangipara constituency, where the BJP's Prasenjit Bag won the election, beating TMC leader Snehasis Chakraborty by 862 votes.
TMC pointed out that over 5,000 voters were deleted because of the SIR - far higher than the vote difference of 862.
The senior lawyer called for some sort of court intervention in such cases, where the election results are likely to have been impacted by large-scale voter deletions, which are still in the process of being challenged before appellate tribunals.
"My candidate lost by 862 votes, but 5,550 names were deleted. This Court had indicated that if the vote difference is less than deletion of names, then this court will look into it," TMC said.
The Court, however, indicated that a separate application would have to be filed to raise issues about the election results.
"Whatever you want to say about results, about deletions etc. this requires an independent IA," said Justice Bagchi.
Pertinently, during a hearing on April 13, Justice Bagchi had said that unless and until there is "enormous amount of voters excluded", the election results cannot be interfered with.
"If 10 percent does not vote and winning margin is more than 10 percent then...if it's less than 5 percent then we have to apply our mind. Earlier a candidate was given primacy before the appellate tribunal because a candidate cannot be denied the right to contest. Please don't think the question is not in our mind that what about those who are excluded," the judge had added.
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