Calcutta HC stays order to EC to act on TMC's Alo Rani’s nationality

A Calcutta High Court division bench on Thursday (26 May) stayed a single-bench order asking the Indian Election Commission to probe and act against Alo Rani Sarkar, a Trinamool Congress candidate in the 2021 assembly polls, after her name appeared in the electoral rolls in Bangladesh.

Alo Rani Sarkar had lost in the Bongaon (South) assembly constituency to BJP and had moved court challenging her loss, reports the Times of India

The single bench dismissed her plea on grounds that some admissions in her petition amounted to admitting that she was a Bangladeshi citizen.

Calcutta HC had then asked the poll panel to act on her nationality issue. Sarkar had then moved the bench of justices Arijit Banerjee and Ananya Bandopadhyay, saying that the single-bench order asking EC to act against her was beyond the election petition's scope.

She claimed she had said she was an Indian citizen and that nationality was to be proven with evidence.

The division bench said it prima facie felt that Sarkar had raised some valid questions that should be heard by a regular bench, and stayed the part of the order that asked the Indian Election Commission to act on her nationality