The Trinamool Congress chief appeared in person before the court to argue her plea challenging the special intensive revision of voter rolls in her state.<\/b>
\nWest Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday alleged that her state was being \u201ctargeted\u201d through the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls, and questioned why the process was not being carried out in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Assam, Live Law reported.
The Election Commission is conducting a special revision of the voter list in Assam, which is similar to the usual updates to the electoral roll.
On Wednesday, the Trinamool Congress chief appeared in person before the court to argue her petition challenging the special intensive revision being conducted by the Election Commission.
Banerjee had moved an interlocutory application seeking permission to appear and argue the case herself, Bar and Bench reported.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi is hearing the matter.
In her petition, the chief minister has raised concerns that the exercise poses an immediate and irreversible risk of mass disenfranchisement of eligible voters in the Assembly elections, Bar and Bench reported.
She has sought the court\u2019s direction that the polls be conducted on the basis of the existing electoral rolls prepared last year.
The state polls are expected to be held by April or May.
Banerjee has also asked the court to direct the election authorities not to summon voters for hearings in cases involving name mismatches or spelling variations categorised as \u201clogical discrepancies\u201d during the revision exercise.
She asked for such corrections to be carried out suo moto on the basis of available records.
Logical discrepancies include a mismatch in parents\u2019 names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being above six. Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen was among those who got such a notice, with the Election Commission citing a gap of less than 15 years between him and his parents.
The draft electoral rolls for West Bengal under the special intensive revision exercise were published on December 16. The names of over 58 lakh voters were removed from voter lists in the state as they had either died, migrated outside the state or did not submit their enumeration forms.
In her interlocutory application, Banerjee submitted that she is \u201caware of the ground realities faced by residents of West Bengal due to the SIR process\u201d, Bar and Bench reported.
\u201cHer appearance in person would assist the court in the effective adjudication of the case,\u201d the legal news outlet quoted her as submitting before the court.<\/p>\n