Finding it strange how tens of thousands of seats in the West Bengal panchayat polls went unopposed, the Supreme Court on Tuesday observed this was proof to indicate that democracy at grass-root level was not working in the state.
The bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra directed the State Election Commission to present the correct figures by Wednesday of the number of seats where candidates were declared elected unopposed giving further breakup of seats falling in Gram Panchayat, Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti.
The State Election Commission represented by senior advocate Amarendra Saran submitted that the Courts need not continue with the case as elections are already over. At this, the counsel representing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) objected pointing out that the Court is yet to decide on the seats where candidates were elected unopposed. The Court had stayed the state election body from declaring these results. However, the state argued that in the past, civic polls witnessed seats where results were declared without a contest. The bench found the number of such seats to be over 20000 out of a total of 587692 seats. Although Saran said this constituted merely 34 per cent of total seats, the bench wondered how the election commission could make light of this figure.
“We cannot remain oblivious of this fact that such a huge number of seats were uncontested in the Panchayat elections of the state,” said the bench, also comprising Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud.
A “puzzled” bench asked the Commission, “You (state election commission) are the guardian of law. It was vivid that so many seats were going uncontested…It is shocking that thousands of Gram Panchayat seats went uncontested. This means Chapter IX of the Constitution (dealing with constitution of Panchayat forming democracy at grass-root level) is not working.”