Kolkata: West Bengal State Election Commission on Saturday announced the new schedule of polls for the formation of new boards for four municipal corporations in the state namely Bidhannagar, Chandernagar, Asansol and Siliguri. Polls will be conducted on February 12 from 7 am to 5 pm instead of the pre-scheduled date of January 22. However, SEC is yet to announce the date of counting and the commission office-bearers said that the counting date will be announced on Monday.
On Friday, the division bench of the Calcutta High Court Chief justice Prakash Srivastava directed the SEC West Bengal to take a decision within 48 hours whether the polls for four municipal corporations in the state can be deferred by four to six weeks in the backdrop of the rising COVID-19 graph in the state. Within 24 hours of that court directive, the commission announced that polls for these four municipal corporations will be postponed for three weeks.
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On Sunday morning, the state government gave a letter to the commission claiming that it does not have any objection if the poll dates are deferred. Soon after that the commission issued fresh notifications announcing the new polling dates.
Sources said that soon after the court directive on Friday noon, top officials of the state government and the commission started discussing the possibilities of deferring the polls dates. Besides fixing the 48-hour deadline to the commission, the court also directed social activist Bimal Bhattacharya to submit the details of his findings on the COVID-19 situation in the state to the commission.
The division bench of the Calcutta High Court chief justice observed that Bhattacharya's report might help the commission in taking a decision. State BJP leadership claimed that they were the first to demand the rescheduling of poll dates.
