Chinmoy Mondal v. The Secretary Of West Bengal Election Comission And ORS.

SL 12 20.06.2023 d.p.

In The High Court At Calcutta Constitutional Writ Jurisdiction Appellate Side W.P.A 14599 of 2023 Chinmoy Mondal -versus The Secretary of West Bengal Election Commission & Ors.

Mr. Sabyasachi Chatterjee, Mr. Sandipan Das, Mr. Sayan Banerjee, Mr. Badrul Karim, Mr. Subhajit Saha.

...For the Petitioner.

Ms. Sonal Sinha, Mr. Sayan Datta, Mr. Soumen Chatterjee, Mr. Sujit Gupta.

...For Election Commission.

The petitioner claims to be a member of the OBC- 'A' category. Caste Certificate was issued in favour of the petitioner on 14th June, 2023.

The petitioner claims that at the time of filing the nomination for contesting the Panchayat General Election 2023, he submitted the photocopy of the caste certificate but the Returning Officer put a tick mark in respect of the column which mentions that the caste certificate has not been submitted.

The petitioner submits that he came to know of the aforesaid only after the scrutiny was over on 17th June, 2023.

Prayer has been made for permitting the petitioner to contest the election as OBC 'A' category candidate from the reserved seat.

It is seen that the time for scrutiny of nomination papers is long over and the date and time for withdrawal of the nomination is also over.

At this stage it will be practically difficult for the concerned officer to check the papers of the petitioner and ascertain as to whether the caste certificate was actually submitted or not.

As the final list is yet to be published, the Court directs the concerned officer to scrutinize the documents of the petitioner to ascertain as to whether the caste certificate was actually submitted along with other documents. Such scrutiny shall be made by today (20.06.2023).

If it appears that the caste certificate of the petitioner is in order, then the Commission shall consider the nomination of the petitioner to be proper. If the caste certificate is not available with the documents submitted by the petitioner, then no further step is required to be taken by the Commission in this regard.

The writ petition stands disposed of.

Urgent photostat certified copy of this order be supplied to the parties, if applied for, as early as possible.

( Amrita Sinha, J.)