SEC agrees to conduct elections of all local self-governing bodies in June-July

Lokmat News Network

Aurangabad, April 27:

The State Government and the State Election Commission (SEC), both have submitted their says through submission of affidavits in the Supreme Court, on April 25. The SEC underlined that it is ready to conduct municipal corporation and council elections in June and other elections - zilla parishad, panchayat samiti and grampanchayats - in July. Whilst the state government has underlined that there is a dearth of required manpower and system in SEC and following large number of objections registered against the draft of prabhags delimited by it, the right has been withdrawn.

Affidavit of SEC

The SEC deputy commissioner Avinash Sanas stated that the term of 2,155 local self-governing bodies in the state has ended on March 3, 2022, while the term of 9963 LSG bodies will be ending on December 31,2022. If the election process is undertaken immediately, there is a possibility of holding the municipal corporation elections on June 17, municipal councils on June 22, zilla parishad and panchayat samitis on July 11 and also grampanchayat elections in July. As per the constitution, the elections of new LSG bodies have to to be conducted before end of their term. Meanwhile, it takes around 5-6 months to complete the task from delimitation of prabhags to the day of voting.

State Government’s affidavit

The deputy secretary of the state government Manoj Dattatray Jadhav stated that due to increase in the population, the state government had decided to increase the strength of members in municipal corporation, councils and nagarpanchayats. Hence it has decided to set aside one ward-one candidate and introduce one prabhag -multiple candidates system in municipal corporation and councils.

The state government has passed the two bills on March 11. Earlier, the responsibility of delimiting prabhags was undertaken by the state government under the guidance of the State Election commissioner by SEC. However, the SEC failed to complete the delimitation of prabhags of 13 municipal corporations and 208 municipal councils by March 11. It had just completed the process of inviting comments and objections on the rough draft of the delimited prabhags. Besides, it had also not started the work of delimiting prabhags of 24 ZPs and 254 panchayat samitis. It had only completed the rough draft of delimited prabhags of 6792 grampanchayats. All this process was at primary level, therefore, the state government decided to cancel further process. Moreover, there were large number of objections and comments on the prabhags delimited by SEC. Hence to maintain the transparency, the state government has curtailed the rights of SEC and kept itself under the bills passed on March 11.

Approval of SEC commissioner

There is a provision that the delimitation of prabhags will be published only after seeking approval of the state election commissioner. Earlier, the SEC was performing the task of delimitation of prabhags through state machinery only. Hence the state government has utilised its constitutional right to pass the bills. The fear of the petitioners that the general elections would be postponed for indefinite period due to these bills is baseless, stated the affidavit of the state government.

It may be noted that the SEC had started the task of delimitation of prabhags after receiving orders from the Supreme Court on March 3, but the process has been stalled by the state government through bills on March 11.

Adv Sudhanshu Chaudhary, Adv Devdutt Palodkar and Adv Shashibhushan Adgaonkar pleaded on behalf of the petitioners, Adv Ajit Kadhethankar represented the SEC, senior counsel Shekhar Nafade along with Sundaram, Rahul Chitnis and Sachin Patil voiced on behalf of the state government.