Bengal panchayat polls on May 14; but no e-nominations, says Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed a Calcutta High Court order permitting nominations to be filed through e-mail for the impending panchayat polls on May 14 much after the process of filing nomination papers was over, but refused to interfere with the poll date.

A three-judge bench led by CJI Dipak Misra said that the court would not interfere with the polling process. “We will not stay the polls,” the CJI told several non-Trinamul political parties clamouring for postponing the polls over allegations of alleged intimidation of their candidates by the ruling Trinamul.

Senior advocates Ashok Bhan and P.S. Patwalia alleged that at least 34% of the 58,000 seats had already been declared unopposed. Only Trinamul candidates were allowed to contest these seats and candidates for other parties were not even allowed to file nomination papers, they alleged.


The High Court then interfered to allow candidates of other parties to file their nominations through email overturning a single judge’s decision not to interfere with the process. Bhan was appearing for the CPM and Patwalia for the other parties.

The state election commission had moved the top court against the High Court order. Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi argued that the High Court cannot direct the election commission to accept nominations after the last date for filing papers was over.

“The High Court wrongly imported the Indian Telegraph Act into the Representation of the Peoples Act to ask us to accept e-nominations,” he charged. The CJI prima facie agreed with him and stayed the High Court order asking the poll panel to accept e-nominations.

Polling will go on as scheduled on May 14, the bench comprising among others of Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud said.

However, the court restrained the poll panel from declaring unopposed Trinamul candidates from the 34% seats from which the Opposition parties were allegedly prevented from filing their nominations.

Dwivedi said that some had already been declared elected and their elections would have to be set aside via election petitions filed in court challenging their elections. The court will now deal with this issue in July. The term of panchayats expires only in August.