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Let Mamata Banerjee’s election plea be heard outside Bengal: Suvendu Adhikari to SC
Suvendu Adhikari’s petition asked Supreme Court to transfer Mamata Banerjee’s plea challenging Nandigram election result to a court outside West Bengal.
NEW DELHI/KOLKATA: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court to transfer the petition filed against his Nandigram election by chief minister Mamata Banerjee outside the state, people familiar with the development said.
The petition was filed in the top court by Adhikari’s legal team and is yet to be listed. The case has been given a “provisional” registration and is awaiting final numbering by the Supreme Court’s registry, a person aware of the matter said.
The development comes hours after the Calcutta High Court issued notice to Suvendu Adhikari on Banerjee’s election petition challenging her defeat from Nandigram in the assembly polls. Adhikari defeated the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief by a margin of 1,956 votes. It was her first electoral defeat in 32 years. Banerjee insists that election officials didn’t count the votes properly and when she sought a recount after the results were declared, the returning officer rejected her request.
The high court also ordered the Election Commission to preserve all records, devices, such as EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) and video recordings,” Sanjay Basu, a lawyer who represents Banerjee, said after the single judge bench of justice Shampa Sarkar held the first hearing on Wednesday.
“Let notice be issued. The matter is made returnable on August 12, 2021. Pending the decision of the case, all documents, election papers, devices, video recordings etc connected with the election which is under challenge before this court shall be preserved by the concerned authority”, justice Sarkar said in her order on Wednesday.
Banerjee’s lawyer Sanjay Basu said the court also noted that the election petition does not suffer from any defect under the Representation of the People’s Act.
Last week Justice Kausik Chanda recused from the case after imposing a fine of ₹5 lakh on the Trinamool Congress chief for the manner in which she sought his recusal was sought. Banerjee and her party asked for transferring the petition to another judge citing “apprehension of bias” since Justice Chanda had, before his elevation to the bench in 2019, represented the BJP and its leaders in court cases and was seen in photographs sharing a dais with BJP leaders including state unit chief Dilip Ghosh.
Justice Chanda, who agreed to step back, however, underlined that it was preposterous to suggest that a judge who had a past association with a political party as a lawyer should not receive a case involving the said political party or any of its members. “The past association of a judge with a political party by itself cannot form apprehension of bias,” he said.
