District schools affected by loss of teachers
The Serampore Girls High School and Rishra Vidyapith Higher Secondary School are now facing acute shortage of teachers.
Justice Subrata Talukdar of Calcutta High Court on Tuesday questioned the plea of the Trinamul Congress counsel that it wasn’t within the jurisdiction of the court to hear the case of panchayat poll process and extended his interim order of stalling the poll process by a day.
Hearing a petition on the maintainability of an appeal against it, the court asked : “Why did the Supreme Court send it back to Calcutta High Court for expeditious hearing if the high court cannot hear it on the point of maintainability ?”
Earlier, Trinamul counsel Kalyan Bandopadhaya had submitted that the court couldn’t “interfere” with the electoral process.
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The prayers of the BJP which, inter alia, seek necessary protection to candidates to contest panchayat elections and deployment of central forces have become infructuous by the 9 April order of State Election Commission, Bandyopadhyay submitted.
“It is up to the State Election Commission (SEC) to conduct the panchayat elections. The court has no business in it,” he pleaded.
It is not within the court’s domain to direct the SEC to conduct a fair election as sought by CPI-M’s petition, it was submitted. As for the petition of Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS), if it was granted then there would be no election, Bandyopadhyay pleaded.
Citing an order of the Supreme Court, it was submitted that once the electoral process is set in motion, the high court would not be justified in stalling the proceeding. If a grievance is voiced by a political party, the SEC will address it.
Bandyopadhyay further argued no specific charges had been made in the petition of the political parties, while the Trinamul had been affected by the stalling of the election process.
Quoting some figures of filing of nomination in the rural polls, Bandopadhaya submitted that in the light of these figures the charges of intimidation of Opposition nominees and preventing them from filing nominations papers didn’t hold water.
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