Supreme Court reserves orders on rural body polls in TN

Following the submission the Supreme Court reserved its orders on the DMK petition against the conduct of panchayat polls without fresh delimitation to Friday.

At the outset, a bench comprising Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices BR Gavai and Surya Kant said the law on delimitation needed to be followed after the bifurcation or trifurcation of four districts into nine.

The state government gave a written undertaking that a de novo delimitation will be undertaken for the new districts--Kancheepuram, Chengalpattu, Vellore, Tirupattur, Ranipet, Villupuram, Kallakurichi, Tirunelveli and Tenkasi. “A notification will be issued by the State Election Commission notifying the elections for the Panchayats at the village, intermediate and district level in respect of all districts except the nine re-constituted districts,” the state said in its undertaking.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the state government, referred to various judgments and said once the poll process, even imperfect one, has been in set in motion, no court can or should delay or postpone it.

Senior advocates AM Singhvi and Kapil Sibal, appearing for DMK, asked as to how the local body polls can be held without proper delimitation which is the “base of democracy” and a wrong impression has been created as if the DMK was delaying the poll process.

“You (state government) delay the process by bifurcating the districts and then say proper follow-up procedure (delimitation) should not be followed. The law must be followed and if it involves the postponement of polls, so be it,” the bench observed.The bench felt that elections may be held after delimitation in all the nine districts.  It recalled the July direction in which the court had said that elections should be held only after delimitation.  There should be delimitation in all the nine new districts too, the bench said. The judges also felt there should be reservations too.

The bench gave the state government two options and asked it to either agree to keep bifurcation of districts in abeyance or do not hold local bodies elections for the nine new districts.The counsel for the state later informed the court that it was willing to put on hold the elections in nine districts and the same process will continue in other local bodies in other districts of the state.