NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday favoured reviving a plea of Trinamool Congress (TMC) party alleging irregularities and unabated violence during recently concluded Tripura civic polls before the High Court, saying it had intervened only to ensure peaceful elections.
A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant, and Vikram Nath said that now the election process is complete and the result has been declared, the allegations of irregularities and violence can be dealt with by the Tripura High Court.
Since the electoral process is complete, we will revive your (TMC) writ petition before the High Court, which will consider your residuary prayers," the bench said.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Tripura government, pointed out that a writ petition was pending before the High Court, in which they had identical prayers.
"This court had taken up the plea of the party because at that time High Court was in recess but what was not told to this court was the fact that they themselves have sought adjournment of their petition for listing after the recess. The High Court was to open on November 11 but on November 9, they had moved the top court," he said.
"They suppressed the facts and misled the court saying they were compelled to invoke Article 32 jurisdiction to approach this court as the High Court was in recess.
Their writ petition was dismissed as not pressed after this court on November 11, passed a detailed order," he said.
Mehta pointed out that a similar petition related to West Bengal poll violence came before the top court but then it had sent it back to the Calcutta High Court, which is looking into it.
The bench said, "The reason why this court intervened was because our concern was that the election process must take place peacefully.
We intervened only as the interest of free and fair elections in the democracy is of such overall importance that we felt that the Supreme Court should not have wasted any time.
The circumstances why we assumed jurisdiction was peculiar to the situation."
It added that they might have withdrawn their writ petition before the High Court as they cannot have a 'second bite of the cherry'.
Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing on behalf of TMC, said that despite the court passing detailed orders with directions to the state home secretary, DGP, and police, unfortunately, 112 seats went uncontested.
"This is situation is similar to West Bengal Panchayat elections, where your party is in power and seats went uncontested.
Identical allegations were made against your party.
We remember our 2018 judgement, where then Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A M Khanwilkar, and myself had passed orders certain sweeping directions of Calcutta High Court, where it has allowed filing of nomination papers through e-mails," Justice Chandrachud said.
The bench observed that if the petitioner said 112 seats went uncontested as a result of coercion, or force, or whatever then the party has remedies available under law.
"What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If a candidate is prevented from filing his nomination papers, then he can still file an election petition after the results are declared," it said.
Sankaranarayanan said that even if the writ petition is revived before the High Court, this court will still have to deal with the contempt petition filed by the party, which is filed for violation of orders.
The bench said that it agrees with the submission because the High Court cannot deal with the contempt arising out of violation of the Supreme Court's order.
Sankaranarayanan said that despite three orders of the court in which specific directions were issued to the DGP and home secretary nothing was done on the ground and pointed out 16 instances of violence and their candidates not allowed to vote.
Mehta said that he can show all the orders of this court were scrupulously followed by the State government.
On November 25, the top court had directed the Ministry of Home Affairs to provide two additional companies of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) to secure the polling booths during the Tripura municipal polls after the opposition TMC and CPI (M) alleged that their candidates and supporters were not allowed to cast their votes.
On November 23, the top court had refused the TMC plea for postponing of municipal elections in Tripura and said it is an extreme recourse and last resort to do in a democracy and passed a slew of directions to the state police to ensure free and fair elections.
On November 11, it had issued notice to the state government on the plea by TMC and its Rajya Sabha MP Sushmita Dev seeking security for the party workers and representatives alleging wide-scale violence against them.
On November 28, Tripura's ruling BJP pulverised Mamata Banerjee's TMC and the Left, capturing with surprising ease the Agartala Municipal Corporation, 13 other civic bodies, besides six more where its candidates had won without a challenge.
The saffron party now holds 329 of the 334 seats in the urban civic bodies of the state where it was hardly a force to reckon with before the 2018 assembly polls.
Of 334 seats the BJP contested, it had won unopposed 112 as opposition candidates either did not contest or withdrew their candidacy, amid allegations of rampant violence and voter intimidation.