More phases fail to impress wary SEC

“Until we get a clear figure of the armed forces that the state government will be able to provide,we will not go for an election,” said a senior official of the SEC.

The poll panel official said the state had claimed to have 55,000 armed forces,but the SEC wanted to know the actual availability of forces for polls.

The SEC is also not convinced by the fresh dates proposed by the government — — July 2,4,6 and 9 — as it believes that there should ideally be a gap of three days between the two consecutive phases of voting. “Otherwise,deployment of forces in the other district next day would not be easy,” the official said and added that even if the state provided the required number of forces,a lot of other things have to fall in place for the elections to be conducted smoothly.

Chief Secretary Sanjay Mitra,Home Secretary Basudeb Banerjee,DG Naparajit Mukherjee and ADG (Law and Order) Banibrata Basu had in the court met the State Election Commissioner,Meera Pandey,to resolve the issues concerning the availability of forces. However,nothing concrete materialised in the 15-minute meeting.

“They (the state government) had only come to tell us the proposed division of phases. They could not tell us the exact number of forces available and would tell that in the court tomorrow. We will decide our next course of action then,” the official added.

Asked if it will be possible to conduct the polls smoothly if the number of phases is raised to six,he said there would be too many technicalities in that case as well.

“There is no provision in the Panchayat Act that specifies that there would be a re-nomination in this case or not. This would again give rise to another complication as to what happens to the candidates who have won uncontested. It is up t o the court to decide what happens next,” he said.