SC to hear TMC’s plea today over staff for counting votes

THe sublime margaret court is scheduled to contain a special posing on sat to hear a plea filed by the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) challenging a Calcutta high court order that dismissed their petition against the Election Commission’s (EC) directive to deploy central government and PSU employees for counting the votes polled in the West Bengal Assembly election.The high court dismissed the AITC’s petition on Thursday, saying there was no illegality in the poll panel’s decision to appoint counting supervisors and assistants from central government and Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) employees, instead of the state government staff.Filing an urgent appeal on Friday, the AITC approached the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant with a request to constitute a bench on Saturday as the counting of votes in West Bengal is scheduled on May 4. Polling for the 294-member Assembly was held in two phases on April 23 and April 29.A bench of justices PS Narasimha and Joymalya Bagchi will take up the plea filed by advocate Sanchit Garga against the ECI, the West Bengal chief electoral officer (CEO) and the state additional CEO who issued the order under challenge on April 13. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal along with other senior advocates are expected to argue the petition before the top court.Apprehending bias and a possible distortion of level playing field, the AITC has questioned such a requirement without disclosing any reason or criteria. The party said that the order specifies “at least one among the counting supervisor and counting assistant at each counting table shall be a central government/central PSU employee”.According to the petition, such a directive will “significantly” alter the composition of personnel at the counting tables by disproportionately increasing the presence of individuals under the control of the Central Government. “This creates a reasonable apprehension of bias, undermines the neutrality of the counting process, and disturbs the level playing field between contesting political parties… given that its principal political opponent, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is the ruling party at the Centre and thus exercises administrative control over Central Government/public sector undertaking employees,” it said.Such an arrangement is applicable to other states and the additional CEO who has issued the directive has no jurisdiction to issue such a directive, the AITC claimed.As per the Handbook for Counting Agents, 2023, the AITC said that each counting table already has micro-observers, who are invariably central government/central PSU employees. The present directive will introduce an additional layer of central government officers as counting supervisors or counting assistants, to which the AITC has objected.The Calcutta HC, in its order passed on April 30, brushed aside the apprehension of bias as “impossible to believe” and asked the party to challenge this in an election petition after declaration of results. Further, the HC was of the view that the ECI has the prerogative to appoint counting personnel from either the central or state government which cannot be questioned by the court.The AITC said that “its apprehensions are borne out of legitimate concerns of institutional control and structural bias”, and has urged the top court to grant relief by addressing their concerns. The party has also sought for an interim direction to stay the ECI’s directive.