Impleading petition moved seeking to advance local body polls

Change India, represented by its director A Narayanan, has contended that postponing local body elections beyond the constitutionally permissible window of a maximum of 180 days and allowing the executive to directly decide the fate of the people, who cannot be held accountable by the electorate is completely undesirable, dangerous to grassroots democracy and is against the will of the people.

 Pointing out that the failure to swear in the new panchayat and Municipal body representatives on or before April 25, 2017 will be in complete defiance of the Constitution, he submitted that the upper limit of six months provided in the constitution is a result of legislative intention to ensure the continuance of an elected body without any lag between the transitions. He further noted that the same cannot be interfered with by way of a judicial review, which apart from being grossly unconstitutional would also be a judicial overreach against the separation of powers between the three limbs of government envisaged under the Constitution.

He also contended that panchayats and local governments must be there to prepare the budget for the next financial year; otherwise, the money allocation cannot be done judiciously. Tamil Nadu is going through a serious drought situation, unprecedented in the last 143 years. Only elected panchayats and municipalities can come to the rescue of the masses and ensure last mile delivery efficiently and equitably, he added. 

It may be noted that the local body election, which was scheduled to be held in two phases in October 2016, was cancelled by a single judge after finding fault with the notification process. 

Subsequently, a division bench comprising Justice Nooty Ramamohana Rao and Justice S M Subramaniam on hearing an appeal by the SEC in this regard directed the SEC on February 21 to hold the election latest by May 14, 2017, on taking into account that schools/colleges and other educational institutions would not become available till the end of March 2017 or till 15th April 2017 owing to public examinations and thereafter some of the teachers would be drafted for evaluation work till the end of April 2017.