Calcutta High Court refuses to interfere in West Bengal Panchayat election schedule

SC came down heavily on the SEC asking it to conduct itself in a neutral manner and made scathing observations against the Commission over its conduct with regard to the panchayat polls process.

KOLKATA: The Calcutta High Court on Friday refused to interfere in the West Bengal Panchayat election schedule that announced by the State Election Commission. However, it came down heavily on the SEC asking it to conduct itself in a neutral manner and made scathing observations against the Commission over its conduct with regard to the panchayat polls process.

The bench of Justice B Somadder and Justice A Mukherjee said that it was expecting that the Commission would redeem itself by treating the court's observations as a wake-up call. The court claimed that the notification should provide all dates from nomination to that of result and prayed for quashing of the notification.

The bench said that the SEC's decision to reduce the number of phases for panchayat elections in the state from 3 to 1 in it second notification without providing necessary clarification inevitably raised eyebrows and was avoidable.

The SEC had initially announced that panchayat elections were to be held in three phases from May 1 to 5, but in another notification following a single bench order that had directed rescheduling of elections, it had appointed only May 14 for polling in the entire state.

The court said that the SEC had itself invited litigations by its conduct and observed that it should have instead acted in a manner that allayed apprehensions and grievances of stakeholders. The bench also directed that the observations made by this court could not be used by any political party or individual participating in the elections.

The observations were made in its order disposing of an appeal by Ritju Ghosal, a general secretary of West Bengal state unit of Indian National Congress, against a single bench judgement that refused to interfere in the SEC decision on the poll schedule.

(With PTI inputs)