Arjun Paul 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 17143 of 2023 Arjun Paul versus The West Bengal State Election Commission & Ors. Mr. Md. Sarwar Jahan Mr. S. Khandakar Mr. M. Nazar Chowdhury Ms. Swati Jha ...For the Petitioner.

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

Mr. Santanu Kumar Mitra Mrs. Roma Halder ...For the State.

The petitioner contested the Panchayat General Elections, 2023.

His 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 13th July, 2023, filed by

the petitioner, the instant writ petition is disposed of by directing the State Election Commission to look into the complaint filed by the petitioner 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 petitioner immediately thereafter. The learned advocate for the petitioner is directed to forward a copy of the complaint dated 13th 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.)