The process of vetting claims and objections in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal by judicial officers is likely to begin from Monday.

This was decided at a high-level meeting, chaired by Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court, Sujoy Pal.

This was the second such meeting in as many days following the Supreme Court’s “extraordinary” direction for deployment of serving and former district judges for the SIR verification exercise in the state, citing “trust deficit” between the TMC government and the Election Commission (EC).

The meeting was attended by Justice Tapobrata Chakraborty, Justice Arijit Bandyopadhyay, State Chief Secretary Nandini Chakraborty, Special Roll Observer Subrata Gupta, State Director General of Police Peeyush Pandey, Kolkata Police Commissioner Supratim Sarkar, and senior officials of the Election Commission, as well as the district judges from all 23 districts of the state who attended it virtually.

According to sources, at the meeting, which lasted for more than one hour, the role of District Judges and Additional District Judges was discussed. “The district judges had some queries, which were also addressed in the meeting,” said an official.

After Saturday’s meeting, a notice was issued by the registrar of judicial services directing all judicial officers to refrain from taking any leave. Those on leave were told to join back by Monday.Vebgal:

The High Court also mandated the judicial officers to refrain from taking any transit leave during this period, and cancelled all training programmes.

In the Saturday’s meeting, Chief Justice Pal had constituted a committee in each district for the smooth compliance with the SC order.

In its Friday order, the Supreme Court had said, “To ensure fairness in the adjudication of the genuineness of the documents relied upon and the consequential determination for inclusion or exclusion in the voter list, and as agreed to by both sides, we are left with hardly any other option but to request the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court to spare some serving judicial officers along with some former judicial officers of impeccable integrity in the rank of Additional District Judge or District Judge, who can then, in each district, be requested to revisit and dispose of the claims under the category of ‘logical discrepancy/unmapped category’