Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Thursday put an interim stay on the issue of any notification by West Bengal State Election Commission relating to polls for the three-tier panchayat system in the state scheduled next year.
A division bench of Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj passed the order while hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari demanding deployment of central armed forces and supervision of the polling system by a retired judge of the Calcutta High Court.
On December 13, when the matter came up for hearing first, counsel for the West Bengal State Election Commission appealed to the court not to issue any interim stay in the matter. Hearing was inconclusive since Adhikari’s counsel was not present to present his point of argument because of illness.
Recently, in a number of public rallies, Adhikari expressed apprehension that the ruling Trinamool Congress will try to wrest control over all the three-tiers in the state’s panchayat system by allegedly unleashing violence as they had done in the last polls in 2018.
Amid his apprehensions, he decided to take legal recourse so that avenues are opened to make the rural civic body polls peaceful as far as possible.
While the State Election Commission is the supervising and conducting authority for the panchayat polls, it generally relies on the state police forces for maintaining security on the polling and counting days. However, the exceptions were in the 2013 panchayat polls, when then State Election Commissioner, Meera Pande, ensured deployment of some battalions of central armed forces and for that purpose, the State Election Commission had to engage into a series of legal battles with the state government.
(IANS)
