Chennai: The Madras high court has ordered notice to DMK and the Tamil Nadu government on an appeal filed by the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission against an order of a single judge, which set aside its notification for conduct of local body elections on October 17 and 19.
A division bench comprising Justices Huluvadi G.Ramesh and V.Parthiban posted after four weeks, further hearing of the appeal filed by T.S.Raja Sekar, secretary of TN SEC.
In his appeal, Raja Sekar submitted that the DMK had filed a petition to quash three government orders relating to reservation to various posts in local body election and to direct the SEC to conduct the local body election by strictly providing adequate reservation to the scheduled tribe, followed by necessary rotation of seats in all the posts, as mandated in the Constitution of India.
A single judge had on October 4 passed an order directing the SEC to issue fresh notification, invoke transitory provision under section 251 of Tamil Nadu Panchayat Act, to furnish criminal background of candidate, to reject the nomination of candidate, who do not file affidavit by following the notification dated September 1, 2006. Having aggrieved by the said order this appeal has been filed, he added.
He contended that the election process has gone up to the stage of scrutiny of nomination. Once the election process was underway under Article 243 (O), there can be no judicial order on any of the process. Due to the order of the single judge, every process was at standstill. As per Article 243 (K) of the Constitution, the election to be conducted every 5 years and the election to be completed on or before October 24, he added.
He said the single judge order setting aside the September 26 election notification had resulted in grave miscarriage of justice. The single judge erred in concluding that there must be a time gap between the two notifications. The judge failed to see that once election notification was published, the entire state machinery can be requisitioned by the SEC for election related work.
Therefore, it was not desirable to prolong the period as it may result in administrative inconvenience. The observation of the judge that the SEC had acted with unwarranted hurry was not justified in the facts of the case. Elections have to be held within a stipulated time as it was imperative that new body must take office by the end of October 2016. The judge also erred in observing that the ruling party had advance information.
