The Calcutta High Court division bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam on Monday adjourned its verdict without an interim order after the hearing of the cases moved by BJP and Congress leaders Suvendu Adhikari and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, demanding central forces during panchayat elections and a change in the poll schedule.

The adjournment without any interim order leaves the door ajar for the state election commission to proceed with the poll process according to its plans, at least till the division bench delivers its verdict.

On Monday, during a hearing of over four-and-a-half hours, barrister Jayanta Mitra, the counsel appearing for the state election commission, filed a report before the court in response to an order from the division bench. The bench had asked the commission if it was thinking of taking the help of central forces and making changes to the poll schedule for the sake of free and fair elections.

In its report, the commission said it could only extend by a day the window for the filing of nomination papers, till June 16, and allow the filing of papers till 5pm (instead of the ongoing 11am-3pm). The commission told the court that it wanted to keep all other aspects of the schedule unaltered.

The Chief Justice asked the commission’s counsel why the poll panel started the process of filing nominations from the day after it notified the rural elections. The bench asked the commission to rethink and consider deferring the polling day from July 8 to July 14, thereby making more time for nominations till June 21.

The bench told the commission’s lawyer again — on the basis of a pointer from Opposition lawyers — that with the current six days and ongoing 11am-3pm window, and multiple candidates filing nominations for 75,000-odd seats in the three tiers, each candidate gets 40 seconds or less to do so.

But Mitra said everything was headed in the right direction and the commission has the confidence to conduct the elections on July 8.

BJP advocate Lokenath Chatterjee and his Congress counterpart Kaustav Bagchi again told the court about incidents of violence in the 2018 panchayat polls, and underscored the demand to deploy central forces.

The duo also demanded rescheduling of the poll process, including issuing a fresh notification by the commission.

Appearing for the state government, advocate (and Trinamul Congress’s Serampore MP) Kalyan Banerjee said the state police had enough confidence in its ability to adequately maintain law and order.

The Chief Justice said that during the celebration of Hanuman Jayanti this year (in the wake of violence in some pockets on Ram Navami), following a court order, the state had taken assistance from central forces, which had yielded good results. The panchayat polls, he said, was quite a larger issue, where the state could take the help of (central) paramilitary forces for, in turn, the assistance of the state police.

Countering the charges of the Opposition, the state poll commission’s lawyer on Monday again informed the court that contractual staff or civic volunteers would not directly be engaged in election duty.

Filing a petition in court, the Sangrami Joutha Mancha, a state government employees’ forum for dearness allowance parity, prayed before the judge to ask the commission for more security as state government employees are deployed on poll duty. Through another petition, contractual employees said they did not want poll duty.