Trinamool Congress Moved on Friday
Supreme Courtchallenged the decision of the Additional Chief Electoral Officer to require “at least one of the counting supervisors and counting assistants at each counting station to be a central government/central public utility employee” for counting of votes for the recently concluded assembly elections.
The party sought an emergency hearing as the counting of votes is scheduled for Monday (May 4) and the SC decided to hear the case on Saturday. A special court comprising Justices PS Narasimha and Joymalya Bagchi has been constituted to hear the case. The party moved to the SC after its plea was rejected by the Calcutta High Court.
In the appeal filed through advocate Sanchit Garga, the Trinamool claimed that the decision was “arbitrary, non-jurisdictional, discriminatory and creates legitimate apprehensions of bias as its main political rival, the BJP, is the ruling party at the Center and therefore exercises administrative control over central government/public sector employees”.
It said this “sudden and selective change” in the procedure, which applies only to Bengal and not to other states holding elections at the same time, “undermines the principle of free and fair elections”.
The petitioner said the EC has formulated a comprehensive and detailed framework to manage the process as per the Counting Agents Manual, 2023, which stipulates that every counting booth must have micro-observers, who are Central Government/Central PSU employees, to ensure transparency and integrity of the process.
“Despite the existence of such safeguards, the communication makes an additional and disproportionate demand for the presence of Central Government/CPU employees as Counting Supervisors or Counting Assistants, in addition to the already present micro observers. The said demand was made without disclosing any objective criteria, material basis or transparent reasoning and was purportedly based on vague and unsubstantiated apprehensions of irregularities in counting of votes,” the petition said.
The effect of the directive is to “significantly alter the composition of the counting desk by disproportionately increasing the presence of individuals under the control of the central government without any corresponding representation or balancing mechanism. This creates legitimate bias, undermines the neutrality of the counting process and disrupts the level playing field between competing parties”.
“Moreover, the above communication was secretly sent to all district election officials a month after the election date was announced and before the first phase of the Bengal elections began, which raises serious concerns of malicious conduct and indicates an attempt to disrupt the conduct of free and fair elections at a critical stage of the electoral process,” it said.