Bengal polls: HC Chief Justice’s crucial meet today on publication of 1st supplementary list of judicial adjudication cases

Kolkata, March 19 (IANS) Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Sujoy Paul is scheduled to chair a crucial meeting on Thursday on the publication of the first supplementary list of voters referred for judicial adjudication, which had been categorised under the “logical discrepancy” category.

The first supplementary list on this court is expected to be published on Friday, and the meeting, chaired by Justice Paul, is meant for the last-minute review of the progress of the judicial adjudication made so far.

The meeting will be attended, among others, by the 732 judicial officers involved in the judicial adjudication process, including 100 each from neighbouring Odisha and Jharkhand, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, and his subordinate officers.

“The meeting is also meant to take a stock of the law and order situation in West Bengal before the publication of the first supplementary list in the matter, with an apprehension that tension might break out in different pockets of the state following the publication,” said a CEO’s office insider.

The final voters’ list in West Bengal, minus the 60 lakh cases referred for judicial adjudication, was published on February 28. It was decided that the supplementary lists will be published periodically as per the progress of the judicial adjudication exercise.

Of the 60 lakh voters in the state whose cases were referred for judicial adjudication, the process had been completed for 23.30 lakh voters till Wednesday night.

Out of these 23.30 lakh cases, for which the process of judicial adjudication has been completed, eight lakh voters have been identified as excludable. This means that over 34 per cent of the voters whose adjudication process has been completed have been identified by judicial officers as excludable

The two-phase polls in West Bengal will be held on April 23 and April 29. In the first phase, polling will be held for 152 Assembly constituencies, and in the second phase, for 142 constituencies.

As of now, it has been decided that around 2,300 companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) personnel will be deployed for each of the two phases. Already, an advance deployment of 480 companies of CAPF for area domination had been completed.

–IANS

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