Madras High Court Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee has refused to withdraw his observation against both the Centre and the Election Commission of India of having failed to be prepared for the second wave surge, saying that the post-mortem on the entire count can wait.
Repeated attempts by the Additional Solicitor General and Senior Counsel Rakesh Dwivedi appearing for ECI to reconsider the earlier remarks about the former’s unpreparedness and the latter’s failure to implement its statutory function during the pandemic, failed to evoke any directions in this regard.
Instead, the first bench comprising the Chief Justice and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy said, “Two aspects cannot be missed. The Union’s endeavour that the surge in numbers may have been unexpected and preparatory measures may have been taken for quite some time and the second aspect is the Election Commission’s concern of sensationalism. The post-mortem on the entire count has to wait, particularly in terms of the measures that need to be in place.”
The comment by the Madras High Court has led to FIRs being filed against the poll body as it had not taken any measure to ensure that the number of phases of polling remain at minimum in West Bengal or limit the campaigning before polling in the states.
