SC junks pleas against order on central forces

Conduct of elections cannot be a license to commit violence, the Supreme Court observed on Tuesday, as it approved of deployment of central forces for the upcoming panchayat polls in West Bengal and junked the petitions filed by the state government and the state election commission (SEC) against a Calcutta high court order in this regard

- Utkarsh Anand

NEW DELHI: "The tenor of the high court order is to ensure that free and fair elections are conducted since the state is conducting polls for all the booths on the same day. The order of the high court does not call for any interference. We are not interfering with any other direction of the high court too. All the appeals stand dismissed," recorded a bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Manoj Mishra in its order.

While hearing the appeals filed by the Mamata Banerjee-led government and SEC, the bench emphasised that "free and fair elections are a hallmark of grassroots democracy" and that deployment of central forces will ascertain decorum at all the booths.