High Court seeks reasons for not holding local body polls

Judges summon officials, issue statutory notices on contempt of court petition

The Madras High Court on Tuesday ordered statutory notices to Municipal Administration Secretary Harmander Singh and Rural Development Secretary Hans Raj Verma on a contempt of court petition filed by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) for not having conducted local body polls in the State so far.

Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and M. Sundar issued the notices after being prima facie satisfied that the officials had disobeyed an order passed by the court on September 4 last year for issuing a poll notification by September 18. The two IAS officers are required to be present in the court on September 11.

It was the first Division Bench of the then Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Mr. Justice Sundar which had ordered issuance of poll notification within a fortnight and completion of the entire election process by November 17. The order was not complied with, forcing the DMK to move the present contempt petition last year.

Though the contempt was filed against as many as five officials, including Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan, the first Bench chose to issue statutory notices only to Tamil Nadu State Election Commissioner M. Malik Feroze Khan and secretary T.S. Rajasekar, who appeared in person before the court in November last.

Now, explaining the reasons for not complying with the court order, the Election Commissioner said the State government had passed an ordinance on September 3, just a day before the court order, amending certain legal provisions, which required a delimitation exercise to be carried out before conducting the elections.

Stating that the delimitation commission would submit its recommendations on August 31, he said that it would be up to the government to accept those recommendations and issue a gazette notification. After that, the commission would reserve seats for women, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and forward a recommendation to the State.

After the second recommendation was also accepted by the government, the Election Commission would require three months time to issue a poll notification and 45 days thereafter to complete the election process.

‘Lame excuses’

However, senior counsel P. Wilson, representing the DMK, accused the commission of giving lame excuses. He pointed out that the first Division Bench had listed his case for judgment on September 1 last year. Since the judges did not preside over the court on that day and it being a Friday, the judgement was delivered on September 4. “In the meantime, the State government has come up with an ordinance on Sunday evening.