Post Poll Violence- "Will Take All Possible Steps To Ensure There Is No Violence In Future": West Bengal Govt. Submits Before Calcutta High Court

A Five-Judge-Bench comprising of Acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal, Justice I. P. Mukerji, Justice Harish Tandon, Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Subrata Talukdar was dealing with a public interest petition raising the issue regarding violence which took place in the State after the Assembly Elections, 2021.

Significantly, considering the importance of the matter, where life and liberty of the people in the State of West Bengal is at stake and the issues sought to be raised by the petitioner, a Larger Bench was constituted on May 7 to hear the instant petition.

The submissions made before the Court

A report in the form of an affidavit of the Additional Chief Secretary, Home and Hill Affairs Department, Government of West Bengal was filed by the State pursuant to previous direction of the Court.

However, the counsel for the petitioner, Additional Solicitor General of India and the Election Commission of India submitted that they have not been served with the copy of the affidavit. Hence, they are not able to respond to the same.

To this argument, the Advocate General submitted that he had raised a preliminary objection regarding maintainability of the writ petition filed by the petitioner in public interest, which does not contain any details.

However, the Court remarked,

"The issue regarding maintainability of the writ petition filed by the petitioner shall be decided later on."

Further, the Court directed that the copies of the affidavit be furnished to the counsel of the petitioner, Additional Solicitor General of India and the counsel appearing for the Election Commission of India.

Also, the Additional Solicitor General of India submitted that the issue regarding post-poll violence was highlighted not by one political party, rather by all of them across party lines, who had contested elections, the factum of which has not even been denied in the affidavit filed by the State.

He further submitted that in a number of cases the complaints were not registered by the police stations concerned when approached and that there was no online mechanism available in the State of West Bengal where a complainant can file a complaint to the police.

Noting thus, the Court said,

"In case any such complaints have been received by the aforesaid Commissions with reference to the violence during poll or post-poll, the same may be forwarded to the Director-General of Police, West Bengal on his official e-mail ID so as to enable him to transfer the same to the concerned police stations for appropriate action."

Lastly, the Advocate General submitted that he would seek instructions from the Government regarding the availability of an online mechanism for filing of complaints by any aggrieved person.

With this, the matter has been posted for further hearing on May 18.

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