A division bench of Calcutta High Court on Tuesday directed the State Election Commission to hand over all CCTV footage related to Contai municipality polls to Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) within 10 days of this order.
The bench comprising Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj also directed the CFSL to examine the footage to ascertain if large-scale false voting, rigging or jamming of booths took place in the civic polls held in February.
The bench said that after verifying footage, the CFSL has to submit a sealed report to the poll panel in six months for submission in court.
The order followed a petition moved by Soumendu Adhikari, brother of BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari and former chairman of Contai municipality. Soumendu had moved the petition, alleging last-scale rigging in the February polls by Trinamul goons. After hearing the petition in March, the Chief Justice had said that to find out the truth the CFSL had to examine poll footage.
