Asenura Bibi And ORS. v. The Secretary Of West Bengal Election Commission And ORS.

Item No.61 In The High Court At Calcutta Constitutional Writ Jurisdiction Appellate Side 26.07.2023 Ct-24 WPA 17218 of 2023 Asenura Bibi & Anr.

v.

The Secretary of West Bengal Election Commission & Ors.

Mr. Sunny Nandy Mr. Imtiaz Kabir Mr. Nurnobi Seikh Mr. Subha Pathak ...For the petitioners.

Mr. Amal Kumar Sen, Ld. AGP Mr. Jaladhi Das ... For the State.

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

The petitioners contested the Panchayat General Elections, 2023.

Allegation is that there is discrepancy in the number of votes polled and the number of votes counted. Complaint was lodged before the Panchayat Returning Officer but the same is yet to be disposed of. Without going into the merits of the allegation made in the complaint filed by the petitioners, the instant writ petition is disposed of by directing State Election Commission to consider and dispose 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.

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 July 14, 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 photostat certified copy of this order, if applied for, be given to the parties on usual undertaking. Sh. (Amrita Sinha, J.)