Calcutta HC Defers Hearing on Mamata Banerjee’s Election Petition on Bhabanipur Result

KOLKATA:
The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday postponed the hearing on an election petition by former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the results of the Bhabanipur Assembly Constituency by six weeks.

In the recently held Assembly polls, Mamata Banerjee contested as a Trinamool Congress candidate against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nominee and the current Chief Minister, Suvendu Adhikari, from Bhabanipur. She was defeated by Adhikari by a margin of 15,105 votes.

Mamata Banerjee thereafter approached the High Court with an election petition challenging the results at Bhabanipur.

She argued that although she was way ahead of Adhikari in the first 12 rounds of counting, the trend changed abruptly after that. She also alleged that massive counting irregularities prompted such an abrupt change in the trend.

The matter came up for hearing at the single-judge bench of Justice Gaurang Kant on Tuesday afternoon. The counsel for Adhikari, Joydeep Kar, sought four weeks from the court to give a written submission in the matter.

Mamata Banerjee’s counsel and the four-time Lok Sabha member, Kalyan Banerjee, opposed that and said it had become a trend that court procedures in any election petition are not completed within five years.

“This is a bad trend. Please help in setting an example in this case at least,” Kalyan Banerjee pleaded to the court.

Opposing this observation, Adhikari’s lawyer counter-argued that as per the previous order of the Calcutta High Court, the electronic machines (EVMs) and other election-related documents had been preserved and maintained properly. Hence, he argued, there was no reason for the court procedures in the matter to get stalled or delayed.

After hearing the arguments of both the parties, Justice Kant directed that each party should hand over copies of the necessary documents in their possession to the other party within the next four weeks and submit an affidavit in this regard to the court. At the same time, the Registrar General has been asked to ensure that all the parties concerned have received the prescribed documents properly.

He also directed that the matter will be heard again after six weeks.