Voters in Bengal whose names are deleted, can be reinstated in the electoral rolls and cast their vote if they are cleared in time by the Supreme Court-appointed appellate tribunal, the top court said today in a significant departure from the current rules.
"If the Appellate Tribunal accepts an appeal and issues a final order regarding the addition or deletion of names then then such an order must be implemented prior to the voting," said the bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi, invoking its powers under Article 142 to ensure that eligible voters are not left out of the election.
The top court also asked the Election Commission to issue a supplementary voter list in such cases.
"If the appeals are adjudicated by April 21 for the first phase and April 27 for the second phase then a supplementary revised electoral roll must be issued," the court said.
The first phase of polling will be held on April 23 and the second on April 29.
Under the current rules, the voter list for a particular phase of election is frozen on the last day of filing of nominations and in Bengal, lists for both phases were frozen weeks ago.
The Special Intensive Revision or SIR exercise in Bengal has knocked out 91 lakh people from the electoral rolls -- the number of voters in the state has dropped from 766 lakh to 677 lakh.
Around 60.06 lakh names were kept under review -- many to address discrepancies in names or spellings. Following verification, 35 lakh of these names were reinstated in the electoral list, while around 25 lakh names were permanently deleted.
Though the adjudication process is still on, there was little chance that the people on the hold list would be able to vote.
The top court's decision -- giving them a chance -- came after the poll body submitted the data on April 7.
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