New Delhi: The Supreme Court last week allowed deployment of central forces for holding the July 8 panchayat polls for 75,000 posts across West Bengal. A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Manoj Misra rejected the plea of the Trinamool government and West Bengal State Election Commission, which had approached the apex court, challenging the Calcutta HC order directing the deployment of the central forces.
Noting that past polls in the state had been marred by violence, the top court said, “Holding elections cannot be a licence for violence, and HC has seen earlier instances of violence. . . Elections cannot be accompanied by violence. ”
“If persons (candidates) are not able to file their nominations and if they are finished off while they are going to file, where is the free and fair election,” the apex court observed, adding that there was no need to interfere with the HC order that was passed to ensure “free and fair elections” in the state.
Senior Advocates Siddharth Agrawal and Meenakshi Arora, appearing for the state and the state election commission respectively, tried to convince the court that the HC was wrong in passing the directions which was done just a day after the election date was announced. They said the HC should have waited for few days to gauge whether there was any shortfall in the preparations to ensure free and fair polls.
The SC bench, however, was not convinced and observed that violence was witnessed in earlier elections too. “The fact remains that the tenor of the order of the HC is ultimately to ensure that free and fair election is conducted in the entire state of West Bengal, since the state is conducting election for local bodies on a single day and having regard to the volume of booths which are being set up, we find that the order of the HC does not call for any interference,” the bench said.