By Express News Service
KOLKATA: Arguments in the high-profile West Bengal panchayat election nomination extension case continued to be a war of words on Wednesday with Opposition lawyer Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya claiming the revocation of the extension of date of filing nomination on April 10 was undertaken by the State Election Commission (SEC) at the insistence of the Trinamool Congress government.
Calling the SEC as a ‘broker’ of the TMC, Bhattacharya demanded that the State Election Commissioner Amarendra Kumar Singh be removed and argued that the Calcutta High Court has every right to intervene in the election process and those opposing are raising unconstitutional demands.
On the other hand, TMC lawyer and MP Kalyan Banerjee argued that the Opposition’s allegation of attacks during nomination is baseless. Justice Subrata Talukdar increased the stay on election processes by one more day on Wednesday and set the date of the next hearing on Thursday at 10.30 am.
Earlier, Justice Talukdar had asked appellants to shorten their arguments and keep them specific to the case so that judgment in the case is delivered as soon as possible, as directed by the division bench that transferred the case to the single bench. Meanwhile, state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Choudhury alleged that TMC was deliberately playing a delaying tactic so that elections are not conducted on time.
