Trinamool Congress on Monday told the Supreme Court of India that whatever work was done in Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process in electoral rolls may have affected the result of some seats in West Bengal assembly elections.
The question was before a bench of chief justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi. TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee said in at least 31 constituencies the BJP could hardly convince itself that it had won the election by a larger margin than the number of voters deleted during the SIR adjudication.
In a number of constituencies, the difference between number of voters who were left out and the margin of victory is “almost identical,” Banerjee told reporters, raising questions about the integrity of the electoral process. “In one community, a mere difference of 862 votes was recorded and over 5,400 names were removed from the electoral registers to undergo adjudication”.
The TMC leader says almost 35 lakh applications filed to Appellate Tribunals for adding or dropping voters have not been answered. He also said the general swing of votes at the election result between the BJP and TMC was estimated at 32 lakh, removing the possibility that the deletions would have limited electoral impact.
The submissions had referred to the fact that justice Bagchi had earlier ruled that, if the “deleted” votes counted more than the difference in victory, a judicial review could be ordered.
Lawyers for the Election Commission of India, but, refuted these claims. They argued that the Election Petitions Courts would decide elections disputes, and not constitutional bodies. The poll panel said there is a process for dealing with grievances arising from the revision of voter list.