No restriction to release notification for urban civic polls: Madras High Court

The Madras High Court on Thursday held that there is no ban in place on the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission to release the poll notification for conducting the urban local body elections which are due for several years now.

The first bench of the Acting Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari and PD Audikesavalu held this observation on hearing a plea by advocate R Parthiban who challenged the SEC's decision of reserving more than 50% of seats to the women candidates.

When the matter was taken for hearing on Thursday, R Shunmugasundaram, State Advocate General mentioned before the judges seeking an early hearing and directions on this plea.

The AG informed the HC that as per the direction of the Supreme Court, the SEC has to issue the notification within January 27, 2022.

On recording the submission, the bench noted that no ban or interim order is preventing the SEC from releasing the notification for the urban civic polls.

"The interim-stay only informed the SEC that any action taken will be subject to the result of this petition," the ACJ observed.

The petitioner said that there are 200 wards in Chennai city corporation and 32 out of 200 wards are reserved for SC/ST including the women.

"As per the Tamil Nadu Municipality (Amendment) Act, 2016, only 50% of seats should be reserved for women. Therefore, of the 168 remaining seats, 84 should be reserved for women and 84 wards for men. However, a notification issued by SEC in May 2019 says that 89 seats reserved for women and 79 have been allocated for women," the petitioner said in his affidavit.

He further prayed for a direction to the SEC reserve seats considering the Chennai City Corporation as a single unit for reserving wards. It is noted that AG informed the court that the reservation was made on the zonal-wise consideration.