The Supreme Court on Monday granted four weeks’ time to the parties to file their affidavits and additional documents in Mamata Banerjee’s plea challenging the Election Commission of India’s interim order of freezing the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) party name and symbol, pending final determination of the dispute between the rival groups. Following this,the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been directed to decide the dispute within three months.
On the issue of lakhs of affidavits being filed by MLAs, party members etc, the Bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant remarked that it did not intend to prescribe the procedure that the Election Commission should follow in deciding the underlying dispute.
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“We don’t intend to lay down a procedure that they will follow everything. You complete your procedure, we will fix the time within which you finish your work. It’s not that first time they are dealing with this kind of thing. Both sides, your cooperation will be extremely important. Then they will decide in a time-bound manner.”
Counsel sought more time, referring to the volume of material and the difficulties that could arise in verifying affidavits. Senior Advocate DS Naidu for ECI submitted that: “There could be any number of disputes. Saying the identity of the person. Fraudulent. Saying that this affidavit has not been filed by that person. Impersonation. All these things. We need to decide all those things.”
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The Bench, however, emphasised that the matter required expeditious consideration and said that the parties would have to make every effort to facilitate a time-bound decision and, in case of any extreme exigency, they could approach the Court. Mr Naidu responded: “We will do everything that is possible.”