SEC cites complaints on ward delimitation for civic poll delay

The state government informed the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on Monday that they have received 19,000 complaints so far related to delimitation of wards in the state and once all of them are attended to, the date for local body election would be announced.  

When the petition of KK Ramesh came up for hearing before Chief Justice of Madras High Court Indira Banerjee, the counsel representing State Election Commission (SEC) informed the court that a team has been formed to handle the issues related to local body elections and the mandate of the team is to submit a report after investigations to the SEC. 

After the delimitation exercise was completed, around 19,000 complaints were received from across the state and once all the petitions are attended to, the dates for local body elections would be announced. The CJ intercepted and said that local body election was in no way connected to the ward delimitation exercise and directed the SEC to file its reply by seven days. 

KK Ramesh in his petition had stated that since October 24, 2016, the local body posts were lying vacant and claimed that the elections were not conducted due to political reasons. When the case came up for hearing in April 2017, the SEC had informed that the local body election would be conducted in July. 

Even after July, the SEC had not informed the election dates. This makes it clear that the poll commission has no intention to conduct the election. Despite repeated petitions to the SEC to conduct local body elections no action has been taken so far, he said in his petition. 

However, in the subsequent hearings, the SEC had informed the court of its plan to conduct the local body election in two phases in October, again it was postponed. Meanwhile, the period of special officers appointed to manage the local bodies was extended till December 31, 2017. 

In the previous hearings, judges Sathyanarayana and Hemalatha, who heard the petition, had directed the SEC to file reply for the petition.