New Delhi: The Supreme Court on June 23 refused to urgently hear a plea against the decisions of the new Bharatiya Janata Party government in Bengal to link welfare benefits to exclusions from electoral rolls following the special intensive revision before the assembly election. The government orders have realised what many had said were their worst fears from the Election Commission’s exercise.A bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Joymalya Bagchi asked the petitioners to approach the Calcutta high court.Hindustan Times reports that the Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity, an agricultural workers’ union has challenged a June 4 order issued by the Bengal Food and Supplies Department and a May 19 notification of the Department of Women and Child Development and Social Welfare.As The Wire has reported earlier, the May 19 notification for the Annapurna Yojana scheme, which has replaced the former TMC government’s flagship scheme for cash transfer to women known as Lakshmir Bhandar, stated that while women would receive Rs 3,000 instead of the earlier Rs 1,500 through direct benefit transfer, those who have been struck off the rolls in the SIR exercise, will not remain beneficiaries, while those who have applied under the Citizenship Amendment Act and are awaiting tribunal adjudication of their deletions from the voter rolls will be eligible.Both orders, according to the petition, link beneficiary status under the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the Annapurna Yojana to a citizen’s status in the electoral rolls.Both follow classifications used during the SIR exercise like categories “dead”, “shifted”, “deleted” and “absentee”, the petition notes.This indicates that erstwhile beneficiaries who were marked as such in the SIR, would become ineligible under the PDS. Voters who were removed from the rolls after adjudication by judicial officers are also going to be unable to avail themselves of PDS benefits which involve basic rations.The Samity said that this could make up to 60 lakh ration cards inactive if implemented mechanically by the state government.The court was not convinced of the maintainability of the petition under Article 32 of the constitution, which allows petitioners to directly approach the Supreme Court.“Why have you filed this under Article 32?” asked the bench.The counsel for the petitioners said that the matter was of national importance as several states were following the West Bengal government’s precedent, LiveLaw reported. The SIR is being conducted nationwide now.The apex court said that any similar decisions by other states constituted different matters.In Bengal’s neighbouring Bihar, the BJP’s first chief minister in the state, Samrat Choudhary, has announced that those excluded in the SIR will not be entitled to any government benefits “including ration” and bank passbooks too will be cancelled in “due course of time”, though an official notification is yet to be issued.As the HT report mentions, the petition crucially noted that the government’s action amounts to an impermissible use of data collected for one statutory purpose, electoral roll revision, for an entirely different purpose, namely determining entitlement to welfare schemes.‘Govt going beyond limits’This plea comes weeks after the Supreme Court on May 27, upheld the constitutional validity of the SIR exercise, effectively handing the Election Commission the power to determine who gets to remain a citizen.Former Madras high court judge Justice K. Chandru had earlier told The Wire that the tying of welfare to the SIR is “illegal” and meant to act as a psychological threat.“SIR has nothing to do with welfare schemes. The action taken by the two governments is completely illegal,” he had said.“If I have a ration card, I will have to be given ration. Further each scheme works differently – like 100-day employment that is under a separate act. Family ration is again a separate government order. In the case of those whose appeals are pending for instance (in West Bengal), ultimately their appeals may take time that is not the issue. But the government is bound to provide ration on the basis of existing identity cards. As long as I have an Aadhaar card I am eligible for government schemes. The government is at present going beyond its limits,” he had said.