The Madras High Court on Monday ordered statutory notices to Tamil Nadu State Election Commissioner M. Malik Feroze Khan and secretary T.S. Rajasekar on a contempt of court application filed by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) for not having obeyed with the court’s September 4 order to issue a notification for the local body polls by September 18 and complete the entire election process by November 17.
Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M. Sundar agreed with Senior Counsel P. Wilson that a prima facie case of contempt of court had been made out against the two top officials of the commission, and therefore, they must be ordered to be present in the court to explain the reasons for not having complied with the court order.
The High Court Registry was ordered to issue the statutory notices returnable by November 6.
Directive to SEC
During the course of the arguments, the Senior Counsel pointed out that the first Division Bench led by the Chief Justice had, in a well-considered order passed last month, directed the State Election Commission to issue the poll notification within a fortnight.
Though nearly a month had gone by since the expiry of the deadline, the polls were yet to be notified. This was a clear case of disobedience to the authority of law, he contended.
Pointing out that the State government had issued an ordinance in an attempt to circumvent the court order, Mr. Wilson claimed that the ordinance would not stand in the way of the election commission in conducting the polls.
“Entire civic amenities are in a disarray due to the absence of elected local bodies,” he told the judges.
In a separate application filed in the High Court Registry but yet to be listed for hearing before the judges, the State Election Commission had expressed its inability to conduct local body elections as ordered by the court due to the ordinance passed by the State government on September 3 repealing certain legal provisions related to territorial division of civic bodies into wards and thereby creating a peculiar situation where “there exists no wards” as on date.
