Madras High Court today directed Advocate General A L Somayaji to get instructions from State Election Commission on opening of office on holidays for accepting nominations of candidates for local body polls.
The AG had submitted that even on holidays the SEC worked to receive nomination papers and the court sought clarification by him in this regard.
In its brief order, the bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sathyanarayanan, said "in view of the submissions made, we would like to know whether for the purpose of nominations, the concerned office was opened in accepting nominations on August 29, 30 and 31 between 11.00 AM and 3.00 PM."
The Advocate General appearing for SEC "may also obtain instructions as to what is the meaning to be assigned, if it was opened, to the phrase "other than public holiday" appearing in clause 2 of Election in Form II read with Rule 23(1) of Tamil Nadu town panchayats, etc(Elections) Rules 2006. This information has to be for both panchayats and the corporations."
The bench directed AG to file affidavit by tomorrow with an advance copy to the counsel for the petitioner.
Advocate K Karthikeyan had filed a PIL challenging the notification of SEC. In his PIL, he alleged that notification was violative of Tamil Nadu Town Panchayats, Third Grade Municipalities and Corporations/Election Rules 2006, as per which the notification of programme of election to be published in the government gazette should contain the date of publication of the public notice of election.
He submitted that the rules specify that the notification date and publication date should be different, whereas it was not so in the present case.
Karthikeyan contended that the government first announced the date of commencement of byelection process on August 6 in which the election date was mentioned as September 18. However the poll process commencing date was postponed to August 28.
Here too, the election date was not changed and was mentioned as September 18. He contended that it was illegal to provide a short span of time for the date of polling from the date of commencement of elections and sought an interim direction to stay operation of the notification.
When the PIL came up on Monday, the Court had directed the Advocate General to file a detailed reply within two days.
