'Not Getting Justice Anywhere': Mamata takes SIR battle to SC

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's long-running standoff with the Election Commission over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls escalated after the serving CM personally attended the Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday, urging it to intervene to "save democracy.”

"Mamata challenged the ongoing SIR exercise in the state, alleging that West Bengal was being "targeted" and its people were being "bulldozed" through the revision process. The TMC supremo reached the Supreme Court from the residence of her party colleague and nephew, Abhishek Banerjee.

As the Supreme Court began hearing her plea, Mamata questioned why the same standards were not being applied in other states such as Assam. "West Bengal is being targeted," she told the bench, adding that when justice is "crying behind closed doors", it creates a feeling that justice is not being delivered anywhere.

"They are targeting West Bengal to bulldoze its people," Mamata said, after being allowed by the bench to supplement the submissions of her counsel, senior advocate Shyam Divan. "We are not getting justice anywhere. I have written six letters to the Election Commission," she said, seeking relief from the court.

At the end of the hearing, she thanked the bench for the opportunity to argue and again appealed to it to "save democracy". In her petition, Mamata has challenged the SIR exercise in West Bengal and sought directions to scrap the EC’s revision drive, rely on existing electoral rolls, stop deletions, ease verification of names and accept Aadhaar as a valid document.

Appearing for Banerjee, senior advocate Shyam Divan told the court that only four days remained for completion of the exercise, which is scheduled to conclude on February 14. He said around 32 lakh voters remained unmapped, while about 1.36 crore names were listed under "logical discrepancies". Hearings were still pending in nearly 63 lakh cases, he added.

Divan explained that logical discrepancies included issues such as mismatches in parents’ names and cases where the age gap between a voter and a parent was less than 15 years or more than 50 years. He also alleged that approved documents such as domicile certificates, Aadhaar cards and OBC certificates were being rejected, forcing voters to stand in queues for four to five hours.

Mamata herself alleged that Aadhaar was not being accepted and claimed that many living persons had been wrongly declared dead during the revision process.

Taking note of the plea and the unusual arguments advanced by a sitting Chief Minister, the Supreme Court observed that "genuine persons must remain on the electoral roll". Chief Justice Surya Kant, heading the bench along with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi, said electoral roll revision can involve issues of migration but stressed that no innocent voter should be excluded.

"Every problem has a solution and we must ensure that no innocent person is left out," the CJI said. The court issued formal notices to the Election Commission and the chief electoral officer of West Bengal, seeking their replies by February 9, and listed the matter for hearing on that date.