Salama Khatun And ANR. v. State Of West Bengal And ORS.

26.07.2023 sb. Ct.24 In The High Court At Calcutta Constitutional Writ Jurisdiction Appellate Side W.P.A 17138 of 2023 Salama Khatun & Anr.

versus The West Bengal State Election Commission & Ors. Mr. Md. Sarwar Jahan Mr. S. Khandakar Mr. M. Nazar Chowdhury Ms. Swati Jha ...For the Petitioners.

Ms. Sonal Sinha, Mr. Tarun Chatterjee, Mr. Sujit Gupta, Mr. Sayan Datta, Mr. Soumen Chatterjee ...For the State Election Commission.

Mr. Santanu Kumar Mitra Mr. Amartya Pal ...For the State.

The petitioners contested the Panchayat General Elections, 2023.

Their allegation is that there is discrepancy in the total number of ballot papers found in the ballot boxes and the number of ballot papers counted.

A complaint was lodged before the Commission, but the same is yet to be disposed of.

Without going into the merits of the allegation made in the complaint dated 14th July, 2023, filed by

the petitioners, the instant writ petition is disposed of by directing the State Election Commission to look into the complaint filed by the petitioners at the earliest, but positively within a period of ten days from the date of communication of a copy of this order.

A reasoned order shall be passed and communicated to the petitioners immediately thereafter.

The learned advocate for the petitioners is directed to forward a copy of the complaint dated 14th July, 2023 to the State Election Commission at the time of communicating the order of the Court. The Panchayat Returning Officer is directed to properly preserve the CCTV/Video footages and the ballot papers and to produce the same as and when called for.

The writ petition stands disposed of.

Urgent certified photocopy of this order, if applied for, be supplied to the parties expeditiously on compliance of usual legal formalities.

( Amrita Sinha, J.)