Kolkata: The judicial adjudication process has been completed for over 78 per cent of the cases referred for adjudication after being classified under the “logical discrepancy” category, with the process yet to be completed for another 13 lakh cases.
The figures stood till Tuesday night, said officials on Wednesday. Considering the speed at which the judicial adjudication process is being conducted by over 700 judicial officers, including 100 each from neighbouring Jharkhand and Odisha, the Commission is confident of completing the process by this week, said an insider from the CEO’s office.
Although the exact number of the excludable lot of the 47 lakh cases for which the judicial adjudication process has been completed till Tuesday night had not been spelt out, the CEO’s office insider said that the average daily deletion percentage is around 40 per cent of the cases for which the process is completed during the day.
Those voters whose names would be deleted in the course of the judicial adjudication will have the option to approach any one of 19 Appellate Tribunals constituted for that purpose.
To recall, the final voters’ list in West Bengal, minus the 60,00,675 cases that were referred for judicial adjudication, was published on February 28. It was decided then that supplementary lists would be published periodically as per the progress of the judicial adjudication, at the order of the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has ordered the immediate suspension of the block development officer (BDO) of Hanskhali in Nadia district of West Bengal, Sayantan Bhattacharya. The action comes over an incident of violence at an election-training centre in the district, in which an electoral officer, Saikat Chatterjee, also a teacher by profession, was severely thrashed, allegedly by the ruling Trinamool Congress activists within the training centre, and that too in the presence of the BDO.
He was reportedly thrashed after he protested against the playing of a purported Trinamool Congress campaign video during an electoral training programme.
The ECI sought a detailed report on the matter, and following the Commission’s instructions, an FIR was also registered at the local police station. A report was sent from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) to the ECI’s headquarters in New Delhi, and finally, the Commission decided to suspend the BDO concerned.
(IANS)
