"Won't finish by next election": SC reprimands EC on pending SIR appeals in Bengal

A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant on Tuesday pulled up the Election Commission over the sluggish functioning of the SIR Appellate Tribunal, noting that at the current pace of disposal, pending applications would not be cleared even before the next elections. The apex court was hearing a petition filed by former Congress MP Adhir Chowdhury regarding lakhs of residents in Murshidabad and Malda districts whose names were omitted during the Special Information Review (SIR) process and whose appeals remain pending before the tribunal for months.

Senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya and lawyer Rouf Rahim, representing Adhir Chowdhury, highlighted severe infrastructural deficits in the tribunal and pointed out that the percentage of disposed applications remains negligible. In response, Justice Jaymalya Bagchi observed that since the tribunal was constituted on court directions, the bench must review its performance and consider structural overhauls, including exploring online hearings to expedite the resolution of pending cases.

Counsel representing the Election Commission, D.S. Naidu, informed the court that the Commission was scheduling a meeting with the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court to address operational and infrastructural bottlenecks. Directing the Commission to submit a comprehensive performance report—including the number of functional tribunals, working hours, and total cases resolved to date—the Supreme Court scheduled the next hearing for August 25.