Civic polls by end of May, HC told

A Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and M. Sundar was told that delimitation of wards on the basis of the 2011 census was already over.

The Tamil Nadu State Election Commission (TNSEC) on Monday assured the Madras High Court that it would conduct local body elections in the State by the last week of May.

The submission was made during the hearing of a contempt of court petition filed against a host of officials for disobeying an order passed by the court on September 4, 2017, to complete the election process before November 17, 2017.

A Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and M. Sundar was told that delimitation of wards on the basis of the 2011 census was already over.

The newly delimited wards across the State had been notified in the government gazette on December 15. At present, the Delimitation Commission had undertaken the exercise of identifying the wards to be reserved for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women candidates, the court was told.

“The process of reservation of wards will get over by January 31. Thereafter, we will take up verification of electoral rolls with the assistance of the National Informatics Centre and that will take exactly 95 days to complete. After 95 days (which falls on May 7)... we shall issue a poll notification and conduct the elections during the last week of May,” TNSEC standing counsel Raja Karthikeyan said.

Judges sceptical

When the judges expressed scepticism about the schedule presented before the court, especially because TNSEC had been dragging its feet on the matter for more than a year and also because electoral roll preparation entailed door-to-door verification, the standing counsel said that door-to-door verification would be conducted only where required. He assured the court that there would not be any further delay.

“So, you are coming to say that local body elections will take place only after Parliamentary elections?” Mr. Justice Sathyanarayanan asked. The counsel replied that though the Lok Sabha elections were expected to be conducted by the Election Commission of India in the first week of May, the TNSEC would stick to its schedule and conduct local body polls irrespective of whether the general elections were held or not.

He also went on to state that the delimitation exercise in the State was completed in record time — a little over four months, between July 21 and December 15, 2018 — though other States took about two years. The TNSEC was not in a position to conduct the elections before November 17, 2017 because of an ordinance promulgated on September 3, 2017 requiring the commission to hold polls only after delimitation, he added.

Since the ordinance had subsequently become an Act, the judges wanted to know whether the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which had filed the present contempt petition and wanted the local body polls to be conducted immediately, had opposed the Bill when it was presented in the House and whether any discussion took place over it. However, DMK advocate R. Girirajan sought time to get instructions on the issue.

Taking a dig at the DMK too, Mr. Justice Sathyanarayanan wondered whether the party would want the local body polls to be conducted immediately or prefer to get it postponed citing cyclone relief works as had been done in the case of the Tiruvarur Assembly bypoll. Later, the Bench adjourned the contempt petition to January 28 for ascertaining the progress made by TNSEC on reservation of wards.

The contempt petition had been filed against State Election Commissioner M. Malik Feroze Khan, TNSEC secretary T.S. Rajasekar, Municipal Administration Secretary Harmander Singh and Rural Development Secretary Hans Raj Verma. The secretaries to the government were represented by senior counsel C. Aryama Sundaram and A.R.L. Sundaresan who contended that promulgation of an ordinance was a legislative act for which bureaucrats could not be punished.