West Bengal panchayat polls: High Court allows filing of nominations through e-mail

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday directed the State Election Commission (SEC) to accept the nominations of those, who had sent their papers to the poll panel via e-mail for the upcoming West Bengal panchayat elections, if those were found to be valid.

A division bench of justices B Somadder and A Mukherjee directed the SEC to accept the valid nominations, filed through e-mail by 3 pm on April 23, which was the extended date for filing nominations for the rural polls.

The court passed the order on an appeal filed by the CPI(M) and directed that it pertained to those candidates, whose names appeared in the list submitted by the appellant before it.

The SEC had opposed the appellant's plea to allow the filing of nominations through e-mail, claiming that the West Bengal Panchayat Act did not have any such provision.

The CPI(M) had submitted a list of over 800 intending candidates, claiming that they were prevented from filing nominations at the designated offices and thus, had sent their documents to the SEC through e-mail.

The SEC had contended the claim, saying it had received 340 complaints on the last day of filing of nominations, of which 25 were sent through e-mail.

The poll panel had also said that the 25 e-mails contained 62 nominations of intending candidates.