On a day when the Congress approached Calcutta High Court against West Bengal Government’s alleged attempt to prevent free and fair conduct of Panchayat polls in the State, its senior leader and Congress MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi appeared in Supreme Court to defend the State Government against a similar petition by the BJP.
Singhvi was recently elected to the Rajya Sabha on a Congress ticket from West Bengal with the backing of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC). The apex court, which heard the arguments at length from the senior counsels appearing for BJP WB unit and West Bengal Government, reserved its order till Monday. Incidentally, Monday is the last day for filing nominations for the panchayat elections.
There was a rare show of unanimity between the national parties –Congress and BJP, which united, though at different levels, to approach the High Court and Supreme Court against the TMC goons manhandling BJP and Congress candidates and disallowing them from filing nomination papers.
Arguing the BJP petition, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi pointed this fact suggesting that although, the two national parties are diverse in its political fights, on this issue they were together. Rohatgi demanded the apex court to step in to either postpone the deadline for filing nominations or consider alternate arrangements by allowing candidates to e-file their nominations. On the other hand, Congress through its state party President approached the Calcutta HC to demand scrapping of the polls. However, the Calcutta HC refused to pass any interim orders and listed the case for April 20. Defending the state Government, Singhvi argued that the petition by BJP does not state any specifics of who prevented whom from filing nominations and cited previous case laws to suggest that when the election process is underway, Courts do not interfere. The only remedy, available to such candidates, is to challenge the election of the winning candidate by filing an election petition after the poll process is over.
The bench of Justices RK Agarwal and Abhay Manohar Sapre initially felt that the issue may be considered by the Calcutta HC. But Rohatgi pointed out that an ongoing strike at West Bengal HC had paralyzed all work and no lawyer was allowed to appear.