2022 Contai Municipal Elections | Supreme Court Adjourns Hearing In Plea Against HC Direction For Forensic Audit Of CCTV Cameras To July

Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, on behalf of the West Bengal Election Commission, told the bench that almost one and a half years had passed since the Contai elections in February 2022. “The matter has become virtually infructuous,” he said.

The appeal before the top court arises from a public interest litigation (PIL) petition filed in the Calcutta High Court by Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former chairman of Contai Municipality, Soumendu Adhikari, alleging booth capture, poll rigging, and large-scale violence in the municipal elections in Contai. Soumendu, the younger brother of Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, had defected from West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress in 2021. Days before his exit from TMC, the Mamata Banerjee-led government had removed him from his post as the municipality chairman.

Dwivedi told the bench today:

“The elections are long over. These directions were issued in a public interest litigation filed by someone who is not a contestant, nor an elector. The initial apprehension can be understood – that police should be posted everywhere, there should be CCTV surveillance, etc – in case someone filed an election petition, so that the evidence remained intact. But, now there is no election petition, no FIR.”

In response, senior advocate PS Patwalia, appearing for Adhikari, said, “This has not become infructuous at all.” He told the bench that the matter needed to be heard in extenso, and requested for it to be listed on a non-miscellaneous day. “I do not want to make piecemeal submissions,” he confessed.

“We will keep it in July then,” said Chief Justice Chandrachud, “There is no urgency in this matter.”

Under the scanner is an order by a bench of the state high court led by Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava, which, while refusing to stay the counting of the votes in the Contai municipal election, had accepted the BJP leader’s appeal for a forensic audit of the surveillance footage from the affected areas to rule out the possibility of tampering. Accordingly, the high court had issued a slew of directions, including for the conducting of a forensic audit by the central laboratory. However, this did not pass muster with the top court when the matter travelled to New Delhi in appeal. Last year, in May, a bench of Justices Chandrachud (as he was then) and Surya Kant issued notice in a special leave petition filed by the West Bengal State Election Commission, in which the question of whether the high court could have substituted a procedure provided by law was raised.

Expressing his disapproval, Justice Chandrachud said that when dealing with post-electoral intervention, the high court ought to have followed the process of law. Otherwise, he said, a ‘dangerous precedent’ would be set across the political spectrum. “This will be extremely dangerous in a public interest litigation. As a constitutional court, we are not only concerned with the Contai elections,” the Supreme Court judge said. Accordingly, the bench, holding that the Calcutta High Court had “transgressed the limits of its jurisdiction under Article 226” in directing the state election commission to send the CCTV footage to CFSL, also issued a stay on the said order as well as the proceedings before the high court.

Case Title

West Bengal State Election Commission & Anr. v. Soumendhu Adhikari & Ors. | Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 8359 of 2022

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