Notice to govt on DMK’s fresh plea over local body election

Justice M Duraiswamy, before whom the petition filed by DMK’S organisation secretary R S Bharathi came up on Tuesday, ordered notice to M Malik Feroze Khan, State Election Commissioner, Chief Secretary, Secretary, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department and Secretary, Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department, returnable in four weeks. 

Senior counsel P Wilson, appearing on behalf of the DMK, on highlighting the previous petitions filed by the party and undertaking given by the SEC before the Supreme Court and High Court, submitted that unmindful of the various undertakings that the elections would be held in July 2017, the Government has merely resorted to bringing about changes to the Tamil Nadu Panchayats Act 1984 by amending Section 261-A through deletion of the expression “up to June 30, 2017” with “December 31, 2017” while nothing has been done to start the election process.

He further submitted that the net effect was that the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Department and Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department were managing the constitutional bodies with the help of special officers under the garb of pendency of writ appeal and SLPs before this court and the Supreme Court respectively.

Moreover, the explanatory memorandum to the Bill discloses that the Government was giving false excuses to conduct the elections, he said Wilson also noted that another interesting factor is that the State introduced a Bill to form a delimitation commission in the Assembly on July 10 with an intention to further delay the local body election process. This is done ingeniously to subvert the constitutional requirements, he said and sought for the court’s intervention to fix a timeframe in holding the local polls.