NEW DELHI: Responding to the Supreme Court’s concern over large number of panchayat seats witnessing no contest in West Bengal , the Mamata Banerjee government, the state election commission and Trinamool Congress on Monday asked in unison, “If candidates do not contest, what can we do?” The three took identical stands before a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, which had stopped the state EC from notifying winning candidates on unopposed seats.

All three said the SC must vacate the stay to allow constitution of panchayats, which in many districts had not been possible as majority of seats saw no contest. Appearing for the state EC, senior advocate Amarendra Saran said, “Our duty is to hold free and fair election and not to deal with seats that see no contest. We cannot persuade political parties to put up candidates in panchayat seats where only one candidate has filed nomination.” Senior advocates Vikas Singh and Sidharth Luthra, appearing for the West Bengal government, told the bench a large number of panchayat seats not witnessing contest was not unique to the state.

“In Sikkim , more than 60% of seats saw no contest. In Uttarakhand it was 22%, Haryana 51% and in Uttar Pradesh as many as 57.6% of seats went uncontested,” Singh said. When the state EC and the state government reeled out statistics from other states to make light of the disconcerting situation of candidates getting elected unopposed in 34.35% of panchayat seats in the state, the bench asked the EC, “Have you made any effort to find out whether candidates were prevented from contesting elections given the large number of seats going uncontested?”

Appearing for TMC, senior advocate and parliamentarian Kalyan Banerjee said, “No complaint was received from anyone about threats to candidates not to contest panchayat polls or file their nominations. What can we do if candidates do not contest elections?” Appearing for the respondents, including CPM and BJP, senior advocates Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya and P S Patwalia told the court about the terror unleashed by TMC workers and police on other candidates by intimidating them and even wrongfully confining them for hours to dissuade them from filing their nominations.

“Of the 58,692 panchayat seats, 20,159 seats saw no contest and those elected unopposed belonged to one political party — TMC,” Patwalia said. Arguments will continue on Tuesday.

