Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Secretary Hans Raj Verma and Municipal Administration Secretary Harmander Singh on Tuesday claimed that they were in no way responsible for the non-conduct of local body polls in the State despite a specific order passed by the Madras High Court on September 4 last year to complete the process before November 17 of that year.
Defending a contempt of court application filed against the two officers by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), senior counsel C. Aryama Sundaram and AR.L. Sundaresan contended that the elections could not be conducted because of an ordinance promulgated on September 3, just a day before the High Court delivered its judgment on a PIL petition filed by DMK.
“An ordinance is a legislative action and not an executive action. It is passed by the Governor. Secretaries have nothing to do with the passing of the ordinance. In fact, they have no right to pass an ordinance. For a legislative action, an officer cannot be held liable,” Mr. Sundaram argued. He also urged the court to treat the contempt petition as a direction petition.
Stating that the present contempt petition had attributed malafide intentions behind not conducting the local body elections, he said: “There cannot be an allegation of malafide against the legislature. The law is well settled on the issue.” He promised to submit a timetable for the conduct of the local body polls within two weeks if the court converts the contempt into a direction petition.
However, a Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and M. Sundar was not impressed. The senior judge in the Bench said, “We also want only that but only promises are being made in the court and no definite timetable is being placed here.” They later directed the two officers to file their affidavits by September 24 in reply to the contempt of court petition.
Earlier, senior counsel P. Wilson, representing the DMK, insisted that both the officials should be committed to civil prison. He claimed that the ordinance, through which certain provisions related to division of wards had been repealed, does not prevent the State as well as the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission from conducting the polls forthwith.
DMK’s stance
Rebutting the contention, Mr. Sundaram said that ordinance was promulgated because it was the DMK which had filed a case in the Supreme Court for conducting the elections as per the 2011 census and not the 1991 census. After the promulgation, the delimitation exercise was carried out and it got completed on August 31 this year, he told the court.
When the judges wanted to know whether the DMK now wants to conduct the polls as per the 2011 census or the 1991 census, Mr. Wilson replied: “We want the elections to be conducted with whatever census is available. Here is a case where the authorities want to defy the constitutional mandate of conducting elections once in five years.
“They want to defy the court orders. The executive wants to overreach the court proceedings. It is the executive which is behind stalling the elections. Today, central funds of ₹4,000 crore is not reaching the local bodies because of absence of elected members. Ultimately, the people are the sufferers. The executives are shirking their responsibility,” he contended.
