All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) chief and former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday approached the Calcutta High Court, challenging the election of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and incumbent Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari from the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency.
The petition challenged the validity of Adhikari’s victory in the Assembly election held in April, in which he secured 73,917 votes and defeated Banerjee by a margin of 15,105 votes. Banerjee had polled 58,812 votes in the constituency.
The matter was mentioned before the single-judge Bench of Justice Kaushik Chanda by Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who sought an urgent hearing of the petition.
According to the election petition, the result was liable to be set aside on the ground that the electoral process was allegedly not conducted in a free and fair manner. The challenge stemmed from allegations raised by Banerjee before the declaration of results on May 4, when she claimed that irregularities had occurred at the counting centre and that her election agents were prevented from entering the premises.
Banerjee had also alleged that she was assaulted at the counting venue and that her polling agents were denied access during the counting process. However, those allegations were subsequently denied by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
Confirming the filing of the election petition, Senior Advocate Kalyan Bandyopadhyay stated that the election process had not been conducted properly. Referring to the grounds raised in the petition, he alleged that after 12 rounds of counting, Banerjee and her election agent were assaulted and removed from the counting centre.
According to reports, Banerjee today personally visited the Calcutta High Court to institute the proceedings. She was accompanied by several Trinamool Congress leaders, including Dola Sen, Derek O’Brien and Kunal Ghosh.
Following the declaration of election results on May 4, Banerjee publicly disputed the outcome and maintained that the Trinamool Congress had not genuinely lost the election. She alleged that votes had been manipulated and that the electoral mandate had been improperly taken away.
This is not the first occasion on which Banerjee has challenged an electoral result involving Adhikari. In 2021, she filed a similar election petition after losing the Nandigram Assembly constituency to him. In that election, Adhikari secured 110,768 votes, while Banerjee polled 108,808 votes.
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