A public interest litigation petition was filed in the Madras High Court on Thursday, seeking to restrain the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission (TNSEC) from declaring results of the ongoing elections to rural local bodies in the State, until it conducts polls for urban civic bodies too. The litigant claimed that results of rural local body polls could end up influencing voter behaviour in urban civic body polls, thereby disturbing a level-playing field.
The case, filed by Senthil Arumugam of NGO Satta Panchayat Iyakkam, will be listed for admission before a Christmas vacation Bench of Justices S. Vaidyanathan and P.T. Asha, on Monday. In his affidavit, the petitioner claimed that never in the history of local body polls in the State, had the elections been held separately for rural and urban local bodies. He pointed out that simultaneous elections were held in 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2011.
“Conducting elections for rural and urban local bodies separately, in two parts, is against a level-playing field mandatory in a democracy. Local body election is a single entity. Announcement of one phase of election results will definitely affect the other local bodies, where elections have to be conducted later. It will prejudice the minds of the people. If results are declared in piecemeal, it will affect the ensuing elections in urban local bodies,” the affidavit read.
The petitioner claimed to have made a representation to TNSEC on December 3 itself, with a request to conduct simultaneous elections across the State for both rural as well as urban local bodies. In reply, the Commission on December 14 informed him that polls for urban local bodies would be notified soon. Unsatisfied with the reply, he urged the High Court to restrain the Commission from declaring rural local body election results on January 2.
Mr. Arumugam also pointed out that the TNSEC was now conducting even the rural local body polls only in 27 districts in the State and had deferred them in the other nine newly-constituted districts until the completion of the delimitation exercise. Therefore, It is essential that the results of one part of the local body elections do not get declared before the conduct of elections to all local bodies in both rural and the urban pockets across the State, the litigant said.
‘Record the counting’
DMK organising secretary R.S. Bharathi filed a writ petition in the High Court, seeking a direction to the TNSEC to record the entire vote counting process using CCTV cameras. He also wanted sufficient security to be provided for the ballot boxes, until the votes were counted, besides permitting contestants or their representatives to remain present in places where the boxes were stored.
Similar petitions have been filed by TNCC president K.S. Alagiri; MDMK spokesperson G. Nanmaran and D. Parivendhan of the VCK. All of them insisted on following provisions of the Tamil Nadu Panchayats (Election) Rules of 1995, such as counting the postal ballots first, permitting counting agents to inspect seals on all ballot boxes before opening them and refraining from counting the votes in boxes with tampered seals. K. Balakrishnan of CPI(M) and R. Mutharasan of CPI are in the list of writ petitioners in local body batch of cases. They have also filed writ petitions with prayers similar to the DMK and others, regarding procedures to be followed while counting votes.
