“It is expected that the commission will redeem itself by treating the court’s observations as a wake-up call,” said the court.
A single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court on Friday said the state election commission (SEC) “floundered in upholding constitutional obligations” and refused to interfere in the West Bengal panchayat poll schedule.
Justice Subrata Talukdar, presiding over the case, observed that the SEC should have conducted the election in a manner that showed “neutrality”.
Pointing to SEC, the court further observed that not providing necessary clarification for reducing the number of phases for panchayat polls from three to one had in fact “raised eyebrows”. “It is expected that the commission will redeem itself by treating the court’s observations as a wake-up call,” said the court.
On the last date of hearing, Wednesday, the court had pulled up the SEC for not ensuring security on polling day. The poll panel had announced that May 14 is a tentative date for election and the official date would be decided after the court is satisfied with the security arrangements undertaken by the SEC.
The CPM and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) had moved the high court on April 27 with separate petitions challenging the state election commission’s (SEC’s) decision to conduct a single-phase panchayat polls on May 14.
The petitioners had placed their concern over the inefficiency of the state government to provide with adequate security for a single day’s poll to all booths.
CPM leader Rabin Deb, one of the petitioners, had said, “The state government does not have enough force to provide security to every booth (in the state) if elections are held on a single day. The state election commission made no plans for adequate security and yet it announced a single-phase poll.”
However, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) secretary general Partha Chatterjee had criticised CPM’s and PDS’s move approaching the court and claimed that the petitioners were “scared” to face the people and that they had “lost faith in people’s verdict”.
On several occasions, opposition parties have accused the TMC of falling back to violence to stop opposition candidates from filing their nomination papers.