Kolkata : With just a day to go before the second phase of the Bengal polls, more than 12 lakh appeals remain pending before the Supreme Court-directed tribunals. Out of a total of 12.9 lakh appeals pending for the second phase, just 1,468 have been cleared, while six applications have been rejected. The voting fate of lakhs of other applicants remains uncertain in the upcoming phase.
Long queues have formed outside the Syama Prasad Mookerjee National Institute of Water and Sanitation in South Kolkata’s Joka, where disenfranchised voters waited in the searing heat as time ran out. With lakhs already having lost their voting rights in the first phase, the same fate awaits lakhs more in the second. Lakhs of appeals pending at the last moment in an already fractured SIR process in Bengal have created a stir among the public.
A day after the first phase of polling, a plea was filed in the Supreme Court stating that 65 persons listed on election duty had lost their right to vote as their appeals were not cleared before the polling date.Hearing the case, the Chief Justice of India directed the petitioners to present their arguments before the appellate tribunal. Justice Joymalya Bagchi said that while they may not be able to cast their votes in this election, their “more valuable right to remain on the rolls shall be preserved.”
Earlier, the Supreme Court decided against freezing the voter rolls by April 6 for the first phase and April 9 for the second. It ordered that voters whose pleas are accepted by the appellate tribunals before April 21 or 27 would be allowed to cast their votes in the first and second phases, respectively.
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