Mainstream WeeklyThe Supreme Court has not outright mocked the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise undertaken by the Chief Election Commissioner at the directive of Narendra Modi, but its two commands; first, criticising the implementation of the SIR in certain states, particularly regarding the use of "logical discrepancy" lists and software tools, and secondly, its directive to the CJ of Calcutta High Court to deploy serving as well as retired judicial officers to oversee adjudication of claims and objections arising from the ongoing process, underlines the futility of the SIR exercise.
If the SIR exercise has really been a legal tool, necessary for maintaining clean voter rolls, then certainly the trust deficit between the Bengal government (TMC) and the Election Commission of India (ECI) would not have attained such an enormous proportion, which forced the apex court to request the CJ of Calcutta High to come to its help. Ever since SIR was formally launched in Bihar on June 24, 2025, the CEC Gyanesh Kumar has been playing callisthenics. His action reinforced the perception that he was hiding more than revealing the truth.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that if the apex court had taken serious note of the truants of Gyanesh Kumar, the present situation would not have existed, where Kumar is hell-bent to subvert all the constitutional norms for facilitating his Gujarati bosses to win the election. An effective intervention from the apex court not have avoided the creation of the situation which led to judicial intervention to oversee electoral integrity amid accusations of biased management.
The Supreme Court had unnecessarily prolonged the process of hearing of the case of Bihar SIR. Initially, the CEC Gyanesh Kumar had tried to create the impression that Bihar was a heaven for Rohingiyas and Ghuspaithiyas. But in the end, Kumar failed to get illegal migrants even in double digits. Yes, of course, he succeeded in his mission to ensure the installation of BJP dominated government in the state. The unprecedented victory of B JP and its allies simply reinforced the common belief that Gyanesh successfully rigged the election by deleting the names of the minorities, Dalits, and EBCs from the voter lists.
If the Supreme Court had directed the Election Commission to hold back the operation of SIR exercise till the election process is over in Bihar, Kumar must not have mustered the courage to delete the names of the Dalits, poor, proletariats and Muslims from the voters’ list and deprive these people of their right to vote. It is apparent that the SIR was not undertaken with virtuous intentions and correct procedures to weed out the deficiencies to ensure fairness. He would have managed to have his way if Mamata Banerjee had not fought back and exposed his dirty design to lay red carpet to his Gujarati Duo masters for ensuring their entry into the Nabanna and succeed in their mission to lord over Bengal for catering to the needs of their capitalist and imperialist friends.
Gyanesh Kumar must have refrained from creating problems for both the Supreme Court and Mamata Banerjee if the apex court had resorted to a deterrent mechanism. ECI continued to fee wrong information and mislead the court. The court, instead of upholding the legality of the SIR process, should have sought to know from Kumar why he was in a hurry to implement it. In the Bihar case, the matter was raised, but the court