Zonal panels to look into plaints on co-op polls

To be headed by retired judges; it will include Collectors

The Madras High Court on Tuesday expressed its intention to constitute four zonal committees, all headed by its retired judges, for enquiring into complaints of irregularities in cooperative society elections held recently in the State. The committees shall order re-election wherever necessary.

In a rough draft of their order dictated in open court, a Division Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice P.T. Asha pointed out that there were a total of 18,465 cooperative societies in the State.

Of them, candidates were elected without any contest in as many as 16,344 societies.

Further, no one filed nominations for any of the posts in 447 societies and actual polls were held only for 1,084 societies. In so far as the societies where there was no contest at all, the judges said it was either because no rival candidate had filed nomination or because certain nominations were withdrawn.

Though the court was not concerned with either of the reasons, the Bench said it was concerned only with the third reason which was rejection of certain nominations by the election officers. The court had to analyse whether those nominations were rejected for valid reasons or on flimsy grounds, the judges said.

Dividing the State into four zones — North (with headquarters in Chennai), South (Madurai), West (Coimbatore) and Central (Tiruchi) — the judges said that each of them would have individual committees comprising the Joint Registrars of Cooperative Societies as well as the Collectors of districts falling under the respective zones.

‘No new complaints’

These committees could entertain complaints only from the candidates, whose nominations had been rejected, and not from others and find out whether the rejections had been made for valid reasons. If any nomination had been rejected without valid grounds, fresh elections should be conducted for those societies, the Bench said.

Cases of candidates whose grievance was that their nominations were not even received by the election officers concerned could also be taken up by the zonal committees provided they had already lodged complaints with respect to their grievance with the Tamil Nadu State Cooperative Societies Election Commission.

“No new complaints shall be entertained,” the Bench clarified and made it clear that its orders constituting the committee would apply only to around 500 writ petitions filed in the principal seat of the High Court as well as its Madurai Bench. The election commission was permitted to declare the results of all other societies.

After dictating the orders, the Chief Justice said that her Bench would make necessary corrections and pronounce the fair version on Wednesday.

Hours after the High Court’s observation in a case relating to the conduct of polls for cooperative societies, the Commissioner of Tamil Nadu State Co-operative Societies Election Commission said that officials have been instructed to declare results relating to those that are not marred by allegations of irregularities. The results of elections to choose the president for Stage 2 would be declared on August 2 and the results for electing members for Stage 3 and 4 would be declared on the same day.The election to pick presidents for societies in Stage 3 and 4 would be held on August 6. “The election schedule for cooperative societies whose polls have been withheld or cancelled or postponed or dropped half way or awaiting orders to resume would be issued later,” it added.