NEW DELHI: Segregating petitions challenging the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala from the challenge to the constitutional validity of the pan-India SIR, Supreme Court on Wednesday sought responses from EC, state ECs and state govts while posting these pleas for hearing on different dates.For the Election Commission senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi told a bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that EC and Kerala State Election Commission were working in close coordination and face no problem in conducting SIR and local body elections simultaneously. The state govt has no locus standi to challenge simultaneous conduct of these two exercises.Dwivedi said over 99% of voter enumeration forms have already been distributed and over 50% of them have been digitised. The bench asked EC to file a status report on the process by Monday and posted a bunch of petitions related to the Kerala SIR for further hearing on Dec 3.On the Tamil Nadu SIR, while DMK opposed it, AIADMK supported EC’s decision to carry out the revision of electoral roll. SC asked EC to file a composite affidavit on the bunch of petitions related to the state SIR and posted these for hearing on Dec 4.On the West Bengal SIR, SC issued notice on a TMC MP’s plea and asked EC, state EC and Mamata Banerjee govt to file their responses by Monday and posted the bunch of petitions for hearing on Dec 9. The SIR exercise is scheduled to conclude on Dec 4. The bench said, “If we find something irregular, then we can direct the EC to correct it even if the deadline has passed.”
