The State Election Commission informed the Madras High Court today that its hands are tied against conducting local body elections immediately in view of the recent amendments to the Tamil Nadu local bodies Act.
"The provision, which was made available to conduct the elections without completing the delimitation process, based on the latest census, has been removed. Now we cannot conduct the elections without completing the delimitation process," the SEC said.
The Commission said that in view of the statutory mandate, it had already commenced the delimitation process, based on the 2011 census. It would be completed by August 31 and a detailed proposal made to the state government.
"Once the state approves the proposal, the next stage would be to conduct a street-wise survey to ascertain the Scheduled Caste and Tribe concentration for reservation of wards as such data is not available with the directorate of census which would take at least two months," C S Vaidyanathan, senior counsel for the SEC, said.
After the state approves the reservation, the election notification can be issued and the entire election process can be completed 75 days from the date of notification, he added.
Recording the submissions, the special bench, comprising Justices M Sathyanarayanan and M Sunder, asked senior counsel for the state Aryama Sundaram as to what was the time required for approving the delimitation proposal.
To this, Sundaram said "We can give a tentative time only after getting the proposal from the delimitation committee. It depends on the time required for the scrutiny of the proposal.
"I would suggest the court to post the matter a week after August 31 so that we can go through the proposal and will be in a position to give the time required," he said.
As senior counsel P Wilson for the petitioner DMK wanted to submit his arguments, the bench posted the contempt plea to August 14 for further hearing.
The Madras High Court had lambasted the State Election Commission on July 31 for not implementing its order and directed it to submit the poll schedule on August 6.
The court had given the direction during hearing of a contempt petition filed by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), seeking to punish the SEC for not implementing the court's September 4, 2017 order.
On August 6, the SEC informed the court that it could issue the election schedule notification within three months from the day the state government accepts the delimitation proposal, likely to be submitted by August 31.
The matter relates to the contempt petition filed by R S Bharathi of the DMK against State Election Commissioner Malik Feroz Khan and its secretary Rajasekhar, for not complying with the September 4 order of the court, directing that the local body polls be completed by November 17 last year.
The local body polls were originally slated to be held in October 2016, but was cancelled by a single judge bench of the high court on a petition by the DMK, seeking among others appropriate reservation as per the latest census and rotation of seats according to the norms.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
