West Bengal panchayat polls: Challenging an earlier order from a division bench of the Calcutta High Court, the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari approached the Supreme Court on Thursday. The West Bengal State Election Commission (WBSEC) had begun the process of holding elections for the three-tier panchayat system, and the High Court had declined to interfere in the process.
According to information, BJP leader Adhikari had filed a PIL against this which was dismissed by the division bench of the Calcutta High Court's Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bhardwaj on March 28. In its verdict, the bench said that the WBSEC will make all decisions pertaining to the polling and the court will not interfere in the matter.
Adhikari moves to apex court
The Leader of the Opposition, however, made a parallel appeal to the same division bench of the Calcutta High Court urging to prevent WBSEC from announcing the dates within the next seven days until the time the apex court reopens for regular hearings because the supreme court will be closed until April 4.
The matter will come up for hearing at the division bench of Calcutta High Court in the post-lunch session on Thursday only.
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Adhikari filed the PIL on two grounds
To recall, Adhikari filed the PIL on two grounds. The first ground was that the current population figure of the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the state should be arrived at based on the household survey as was done in the case of other backward classes (OBCs). In the PIL he contended that there could not be two separate yardsticks, one in the case of SC/ST and the other case of OBCs.
The second ground highlighted in the PIL was related to the deployment of central armed forces for the rural civic body. Although the division bench of Justice Srivastava and Justice Bharadwaj dismissed the PIL on March 28, it allowed the leader of the opposition to file a separate petition on the point of deployment of central armed forces.
(With inputs from IANS)
