Kolkata: Further hardening its stand on the Calcutta High Court verdict upholding the primacy of the State Election Commission in holding the panchayat polls, the West Bengal government yesterday said it was ready to take the legal battle to the Supreme Court if it did not get a favourable response from a the division bench.
“We will go to the Supreme Court,” state Panchayat Minister Subrata Mukherjee told media persons when asked about the government’s stand if the division bench upheld the single
judge order.
On Friday, Mukherjee had announced that the government would move the division bench today against the order, which he termed as “impractical, impossible to implement and unacceptable”. Giving a jolt to the government, the high court on Friday ordered a three-phase panchayat polls with deployment of central paramilitary personnel.
In a verdict of far-reaching consequences, Justice Biswanath Sommader said the election time table would be declared by the SEC, which had moved a petition on April 1 challenging the state government’s announcement of a two-stage poll under the supervision of only the state security forces.
The judge directed the state government to intimate to the SEC by yesterday about the list of observers as also on deployment of security forces needed for holding the polls to the “full satisfaction” of the commission.
A commission official said it was consulting its lawyers as the state government had not sent any communication about the observers and the security details
Meanwhile, Trinamool’s national general secretary Mukul Roy rejected the Communist Party of India-Marxist’s (CPI-M) charge that it did not want to hold the polls. IANS
