Citing the already announced examination schedule as the reason, Suranjan Das, the vice chancellor of Calcutta University has requested the Election Commission not to hold the state assembly election before May 6. Das, in his letter to the Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Qureshi, has mentioned that Part 3 (the final year) examinations of BA, BSc & BCom would continue till that time.
The vice chancellor explained in his letter that since a large number of students would go out to various universities in the country for higher studies, any postponement of their examinations would cause serious damage to their career.
Incidentally, last year around 85,000 students of Calcutta University took their Part-3 examinations. The letter was sent to the Election Commission today.
The Election Commission is yet to finalise the dates for holding the state assembly election in West Bengal. But from February 23 onwards, with the beginning of the secondary examination (the school leaving examination conducted by the Board of Secondary Education, West Bengal) the state will enter into crucial examination session. The Secondary Examination will be followed by ICSE, ISC, Higher Secondary and similar other examinations. These will continue till third week of April, after that again the all important Joint Entrance (for Engineering & Medical courses) examinations will be held.
The Calcutta High Court had earlier banned use of loudspeaker during and 15 days prior to these school leaving examinations. If the high court order is to be honoured, then the entire election campaign process should be completed 15 days before February 23, or it could be held after the examinations were over, that is after third week of April.
The latter option now seems to be a more practicable one, even if it goes against the expressed wish of the Calcutta University vice chancellor. Incidentally, the vice chancellor had made similar request in vain to the Election Commission during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
The one constitutional obligation that the Election Commission has to meet is the constitution of the new assembly and holding its first session on due time. Given that the present assembly had its first session on June 12, 2006, there is a constitutional obligation to form and hold the session of the new assembly on or before 11 June.