Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s tantrums with the state election panel finally had its logical end—the Supreme Court yesterday asked her to mind her business and not that of the election panel. A Supreme Court bench of justices AK Patnaik and Ranjan Gogoi in an unprecedented order scripted a five-phase panchayt polls in the state, ending an acrimonious tussle between the state election commission and the Mamata government over deployment of forces for free and fair panchayat polls. They said it would not allow any reservation, either from the state or the Centre, on making available security forces to the SEC.
With the ruling the bench scripted a new chapter in rescheduling the polling dates through a judicial order. As per the rescheduled poll itinerary, the first phase of voting will take place on July 11 in Purulia, Bankura and Paschim Medinipur; second phase on July 15 in Purba Medinipur, Hoogly and Burdwan; third on July 19 in Howrah and North and South 24 Pargana; fourth on July 22 at Nadia, Murshidabad and Birbhum and the fifth and last on July 25 in Coochbehar, Jalpaiguri and Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur.
The court directed the state government to provide 35,000 security forces for each phase of elections. The Centre had committed only 5,000 personnel saying it faced a crunch because of deployments in Uttarakhand and HP. But the court brushed aside its objections and ordered it to provide 15,000 men for each of the first three phases and 25,000 for the last two. Earlier, the Bengal government had notified two-phase elections. But the Calcutta HC ruled that the SEC had primacy in notifying the poll schedule. Pursuant to this, the SEC had proposed three-phase elections starting from July 2.
