Calcutta High Court orders CBI probe into alleged 'paper tampering'

The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe alleged tampering and distortion of nomination documents of candidates for the panchayat polls.

"The allegations are against state government officials. So, the state agency cannot probe into such cases and hence the charge of the probe has been handed over to CBI," Justice Amrita Sinha said. She directed the CBI to submit its report on July 7, a day before the panchayat polls.

Two candidates in their petitions said their nomination got cancelled at the scrutiny stage and alleged tampering of the documents by government officials.


Kashmira Bibi, one of the petitioners and a CPI-M candidate, said: "I have filed the nomination. The BDO (block development officer) told me that my OBC certificate was missing. I have submitted all documents including my OBC certificate. The certificate must have been destroyed, so I informed the party which moved the court."

In another case, Justice Sinha ruled that a Congress candidate, who could not submit the Form-B required to contest under the party symbol, would get an opportunity to file the document in Murshidabad's Burwan and CAPF personnel should escort the candidate for that.

After the court order, West Bengal Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury ended his 24-hour-long dharna in front of the BDO office in Burwan. Chowdhury had earlier written to the governor about the matter.

Justice Sinha also allowed 19 CPI-M candidates in the Bhangar-II block to contest in the election. Their names had earlier been deleted from the candidate list after scrutiny of the nominations.

These candidates were initially unable to file their documents in time due to violence in Bhangar, but the court had asked authorities to accept their papers. While the documents were initially accepted, their nominations were rejected during scrutiny of the papers.

The judge also pulled up the state government over incidents of violence in the state ahead of the panchayat polls.