Irony is that such an announcement is made by the minister for women, child, and social welfare Agnimitra Paul. She said on Monday, May 11 “We will introduce the Annapurna Bhandar for women from June 1. Women will receive Rs3000 a month. But those still … being verified by the tribunals will not be included in the list of beneficiaries for the time being.”

Her statement itself shows BJP government’s prejudice. Not having name in the voter list made under SIR at any point of time, does not prove that the person is from Bangladesh or from any other country. We have seen how millions of people’s name were deleted in the past, many of them intentionally on one or the other pretext by the Election Commission of India, were indeed Indian Citizens, and were ultimately able to get their names in the voters list after the intervention of the Supreme Court of India. Judicial officers were cleared many names and allowed inclusion in the voter list, and now Tribunals are hearing lakhs of cases and are clearing names for inclusion of names.

A former Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court Justice TS Sivagnanam has recently resigned from the SIR Appellate Tribunal and has said that at the current pace, it would take four years to clear the backlog of voter deletion appeals highlighting a massive long-term caseloads. It should be noted Justice Sivangnanam was only one of the justices leading the 19 Tribunals. He also indicated the sustainability of the timeline given to decide on the appeal. The large number of cases found to be valid to be included in the voter lists suggested that the majority of voter deleted from the voter list were Indian citizens, and only a fraction of the persons is left as suspected Bangladeshis. We are yet to know how much names were cleared by other tribunals, but going through the number of the cases decided by the Tribunal led by Justice Sivagnanam we can presume that lakhs of people were ultimately get their names into the voter list.

Nevertheless, BJP’s plan to win West Bengal succeeded by the help of the Election Commission of India. It deleted names of over 90 lakhs names, and put over 60 lakh names in the logical discrepancy list. Supreme Court of India had to intervene because it was chiefly due to the faulty software deployed by the ECI. It was like machines were deciding the fate of voters, without application of human mind. ECI was bent upon deleting, but thanks to the intervention of the Supreme Court, about 730 judicial officers, were deployed for adjudication of the cases of deleted names. ECI gave them little time, and the cases had to be summarily decided, with numerous errors cropped in their decisions, which one can see in the decisions of the Tribunals.

Nevertheless, in spite of being in hurry, the judicial officers found about 33 lakh names were wrongly deleted from the SIR done under the ECI. However, 27.16 lakh deleted voters were found to be ineligible by them, by the time the elections were held on April 23 and April 29. The Chief Justice of Calcutta High court had recommended further hearing of the cases of deleted voters and Supreme Court had ordered their cases to be set to Appellate Tribunals. On March 20, because of the order of the Supreme Court, ECI had to announce 19 Appellate Tribunals, which are hearing the appeals from the deleted voters, and thousands of names are being cleared every day.

However, by this time the BJP and ECI, were successful in preventing over 27 lakh voters to exercise their voting rights. We have been witnessing that thousands of the persons who were not allowed to votes are Indian citizens and are successful in getting their name included in the voter list after the order passed by the Appellate Tribunals.

By this time the chief purpose of the BJP and the ECI has been fulfilled. BJP has won the election. It does not matter now, especially on the status of the BJP’s win, if some or all the deleted voters can get their names included in the voter list. It was only one of the strategies of BJP’s winning the West Bengal election. There are also many such strategies which included taking over the entire administration and police, deployment of central forces under the ECI, disruption of political campaigns of the opposition leaders, and threatening the electors.

The officers under ECI who were involved in the controversial SIR process and alleged to have helped the BJP to win are now being rewarded by the new BJP government. First, Special observer of SIR Subrata Gupta has been appointed Advisor to the Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, and now the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal Manoj Kumar Agrawal under whose leadership the elections were held has been rewarded by appointing him Chief Secretary of the State.

Everybody knows in India about the ‘Give and Take’ culture, and on the basis of the common experience of people they suspect that BJP helped the ECI officers in getting important posts, and ECI officers helped BJP winning the elections. TMC even called its “Beyond shameless” and said BJP’s moves to reward ECI officers showed BJP and ECI were “being open about stealing the election” and questioned whether the courts ere “bind or complicit”.

Now let us come back to the Supreme Court of India, under whose orders many of ECI’s and PM Narendra Modi led BJP’s strategies could not succeed, but it will not be an offence to say that SIR was facilitated by their orders, but they could not protect the right to vote of lakhs of citizens, and ultimately BJP won, and came to power. Tribunals will go on hearing the appeals in the meantime, and they may also get personal justice. However, the social and political concerns of the people will continue to haunt them.

On May 11, in the first Supreme Court hearing of SIR in West Bengal after the election, TMC said that as many as in 31 seats the victory margins of the BJP were less than the number of votes deleted during the SIR. Senior advocate Kalyan Bandopadhyay representing TMC Supremo Mamata Banerjee said as an example, “In one seat, the margin was 862 and 5,432 votes were under adjudication in appeals before the tribunals.”

As on May 11, over 34 lakh appeals are pending in 19 Appellate Tribunals. Kalyan Banerjee also pointed out that the votes gap between the Trinamool and BJP was around 32 lakhs, which is even less than the pending cases in appeal. Though the apex court had ordered the constitution of these tribunals on March 11, they had started functioning only by April 13. Supreme Court has said that the aggrieve parties may file separate petitions.

In the ECI’s, PM Narendra Modi led government’s, and Supreme Court’s perspective these may be right way of dealing public grievances, still it is a socio-political concern. In common man’s perspective, which is based on their actual experience of real world situations, they know, how they are directed in different direction to furnish different documents or file separate applications, when officers don’t want to do their work.

New BJP government must not stop financial assistance to those whose cases are pending in Tribunals, since lakhs of them will ultimately get their name included in the voters list because majority of them are Indians. BJP has already benefited and the opposition lost by deletion of their names, and because they were prevented to vote. If no one, even the Supreme Court of India, can’t see injustice in all these that are happening in this country, we may be heading towards a dark era of humanity. Merely observance of formalities, or just fill up the legal requirements to show that justice is being delivered can’t convince a common man, because they suffer under such strategies of the authorities. It is inhuman and cruelty, which can’t be justified in the name of nationalism and anti-Bangladeshi stance. (IPA Service)