SC rules out re-elections in local body seats won uncontested by Trinamool, rejects BJP- CPI(M) plea

NEW DELHI: No re-election will be held for 20,000 local body seats in West Bengal that were won uncontested by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress in May this year, said the Supreme Court on Friday. 

The top court also set aside Calcutta High Court's order allowing the filing of nomination papers through e-mail, WhatsApp in West Bengal panchayat polls. 

Whoever is aggrieved with the election results can file their petitions before the concerned court within 30 days, the SC said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) had alleged that party candidates were obstructed from filing their nomination papers for the local body polls.

"The issue was that over 20,000 seats went un-contested and the allegation was that the non-contest was due to the obstruction in filing of the nomination papers. The another aspect, which has been highlighted, was that nomination papers were filed by the candidates of one party. We have to see as to what can be done in such a situation," said the top court bench comprising of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud.

Senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for the state government, raised the issue of constitutional crisis in view of the fact that panchayat and local bodies have to be notified to avail funds to the tune of Rs 20,000 crore.

Earlier, the West Bengal government had told the court that the row over the panchayat polls in the state has led to a "constitutional crisis" since the tenure of several Panchayats were over and new bodies have not been made functional.

Out of a total 58,692 posts for gram panchayat village, zilla parishad and panchayat samiti, 20,159 had remained uncontested in the violence-marred local polls in the state held in May this year.

The apex court had said that the issue of huge number of uncontested seats has been bothering it.

The poll panel, however, argued that 33 per cent of nearly 50,000 panchayat seats going uncontested in the state was not "an alarming situation". 

It had cited Uttar Pradesh where almost 57 per cent panchayat seats went uncontested and the figure was 51, 67 and 27.6 per cent in Haryana, Sikkim and Andhra Pradesh respectively.

The West Bengal government had said that the panchayat polls cannot be set aside on the basis of "conjecture and surmises" of some political parties as no individual candidate has approached the court with the claim that he or she has been restrained from filing nomination papers.

Elections were held in phases for 48,650 posts in Gram Panchayats, 825 posts in Zilla Parishads and 9,217 posts in Panchayat Samitis and it has been alleged that around 34 per cent seats were uncontested.

With agency inputs