The Supreme Court on Friday ordered deployment of judicial officers, including retired judges, for smooth conduct of the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections. The top court cited a “trust deficit” between the West Bengal Government and the Election Commission (EC) for issuing the order.The “extraordinary” order came from a Bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul M Pancholi, which took serious note of the poll panel’s allegation that the state government had not spared enough Group ‘A’ officers for the SIR exercise.Rejecting the state government’s objections, the Bench allowed the EC to publish a final list of voters in West Bengal by the February 28 deadline. However, it said the poll panel could come out with supplementary lists later. “No prejudice will be caused to anyone if supplementary voter lists are issued after February 28, as names of electors can be included till the last date of filing of nomination papers,” it added.The Bench lamented constant bickering between the state government and the EC was delaying the SIR process.“There is an unfortunate blame game of allegations and counter-allegations which shows trust deficit between two constitutional functionaries, i.e. the state government and the EC. Now the process is stuck at the stage of claims and objections of the persons who have been included in the logical discrepancy list,” the Bench said.Logical discrepancies in progeny-linking with the 2002 voter list included instances of a mismatch in the parent’s name and the age difference between a voter and his/her parent being less than 15 years or more than 50 years.Noting that most of the persons to whom notices were issued had submitted their documents in support of their claim for inclusion in the electoral roll, the Bench said, “These claims are required to be adjudicated in a quasi-judicial process by electoral registration officers (EROs).”It ordered deputation of judicial officers for adjudication of claims and objections of those put under logical discrepancy lists.”In order to ensure fairness in adjudication of genuineness of documents submitted and consequent inclusion or exclusion in voter list, we are left with hardly any other option but to request the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court to spare some serving judicial officers along with some former judicial officers in the rank of Additional District Judge or District Judges who can then in each district aid in disposal or revisiting of the claims under the logical discrepancy list,” the top court said.Each officer shall be assisted by the EC and officials of state government, it said.The Bench asked the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice to convene a meeting on Saturday which should be attended by the Chief Secretary, DGP, EC officials and Advocate General of the state. It asked him along with a committee of judges, the Registrar General and the principal district judges to take a call to shift interim relief cases to an alternate court for a week or 10 days.Earlier, senior advocate DS Naidu submitted on behalf of the EC that the state government had asked the commission to wait for communication for qualified EROs and that a sufficient number of Group ‘A’ officers was not provided.Senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Menaka Guruswamy, representing the state government, submitted that Group ‘B’ officers were given to the EC.