West Bengal: Rural poll process stayed, HC seeks report from SEC

KOLKATA: The Calcutta High Court, in an unprecedented move, put an interim stay on Bengal’s panchayat poll process on Thursday after throwing a barrage of questions at the State Election Commission and demanding answers to those questions in court next Monday.
The process of withdrawal of nominations, which started on Thursday even as the court was staying the poll process, was supposed to end next Monday. Now, in the changed circumstances, the SEC will have to table a detailed report that very day on the status of nominations filed for 58,000 panchayat seats. Justice Subrata Talukdar sought this report after observing that the “the commission has failed to allay grievances (of candidates) as directed by the (earlier) orders of April 9 and April 10”.

This is the first time that a poll schedule announced by a state election panel has got stalled in a court and this may have a cascading effect on the subsequent phases of the poll schedule, including the actual dates of polling.

The state government and the ruling Trinamool Congress are likely to move a Calcutta HC division bench on Friday against Thursday’s stay order. But state officials could not rule out the possibility of a change in poll schedule because rules under the West Bengal Panchayat Act, 2003, specified the time frame for each phase of the process.

Thursday’s order came two days after the same court passed an interim stay on Tuesday’s SEC decision to withdraw its own notification extending the process of filing of nominations by a day so that candidates, who said they were unable to file their papers because of violence and intimidation by Trinamool supporters, could do so.

“This court is under no illusion that it is the commission’s job to do its statutory job. This court finds strength from a line... that a... court can and must intervene in aid of an electoral process,” the court held.

Justice Talukdar also criticised the BJP’s going to the Calcutta HC and the Supreme Court with similar pleas and fined it Rs 5 lakh for moving the SC without stating that the Calcutta HC was already hearing the matter.

Justice Talukdar, during Thursday’s hearing, asked SEC representative Nilanjan Shandilya what action it had taken between Monday and Thursday after an SC directive and a Calcutta HC interim stay on the SEC’s flip-flop. Shandilya submitted that the SEC had continued with the scrutiny of nominations, as scheduled, on Wednesday. The court took note that the SEC did not take any measure following the two court orders and directed it to file a detailed report next Monday, when it would also hear opposition parties’ pleas challenging the SEC flip-flop.

Senior lawyer and Trinamool MP Kalyan Banerjee said the court had stalled an ongoing electoral process. “The court cannot do this,” he said, citing an SC order. The BJP, anticipating the Trinamool move, also filed a caveat. “We have urged the court that no order should be given in our absence. It is a pre-election process as opposed to what Banerjee has argued and the court has the jurisdiction to hear an election petition,” BJP legal cell member Sumeet Chowdhury said.