Trinamool Congress asks EC to hold bypolls as Covid-19 cases come down in West Bengal

With its supremo Mamata Banerjee needing to get elected to the state Assembly before November 5 to continue as the Chief Minister of West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress on Thursday urged the Election Commission to hold bypolls soon.

To drive home the point that the Covid-19 situation is conducive for holding the bypolls, the TMC pointed out that the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic is on the wane in West Bengal and the daily rise in the number of SARS-CoV-2 infection cases had of late been recorded to be 17 times lower than what it had been when the EC had conducted the assembly elections in the state in March and April.

A delegation of the TMC MPs met the Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra and Elections Commissioners Rajiv Kumar and Anup Pandey at the Nirvachan Sadan in New Delhi.

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They submitted a memorandum to the EC, asking it to take necessary actions and appropriate steps forthwith in accordance with the Representation of People’s Act 1951 to hold bypolls to fill the seven vacancies in the legislative assembly of West Bengal, in keeping with the Covid-19 protocols and guidelines mandated by the government.

The TMC MPs led by Sudip Bandopadhyay reminded the EC that the poll panel had conducted assembly polls in West Bengal in eight phases even as the daily Covid-19 cases had increased from 6,000 to 17,000 in April. The commission had rejected the TMC’s demand of clubbing the last few phases of polling in view of the rise in the infection cases.

If the EC then concluded that it was safe to conduct polls, it can hold the bypolls now as the Covid-19 cases drastically came down, argued the TMC.

Mamata Banerjee led her party to a landslide victory in the assembly polls, but lost to her protege-turned-foe Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP in Nandigram. She commenced her third term as the Chief Minister of West Bengal on May 5 last and now has less than four more months to get elected to the legislative assembly to continue at the helm of the state government.

Section 151 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, requires the EC to conduct bypoll to fill any vacancy in any legislative assembly or councils in any state or the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha within six months from the date of creation of the vacancy, provided that the remainder of the term in relation to the vacancy is one year or more. The sub-section (b) of Section 151 of the R P Act, however, allows the EC to postpone bypolls if it certifies in consultation with the Central Government that it would be difficult to hold the bye-election within the stipulated period of six months.

Sovandeb Chattopadhyay of the TMC was elected to the Legislative Assembly from Bhabanipur during the recent elections in West Bengal. He, however, resigned from the membership of the state Assembly, apparently to make way for the TMC supremo to contest from the constituency. The other constituencies where the EC would have to hold bypolls are Gosaba, Dinhata, Samsherganj, Jangipur, Khardah and Shantipur.

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