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HC clears decks for panchayat polls, dismisses 1k petitions
“The high court has vacated the stay on elections imposed on October 9 in 200 petitions and also dismissed them,” state’s advocate general Gurminder Singh said.
The Punjab and Haryana high court on Monday cleared the way for October 15 panchayat polls in the state. The high court bench of justice Sureshwar Thakur and justice Sudeepti Sharma dismissed 1,000 odd petitions alleging rejection of nomination papers on flimsy grounds by the authorities.
“The high court has vacated the stay on elections imposed on October 9 in 200 petitions and also dismissed them. Fresh petitions filed on various grounds have also been dismissed observing that elections would take place as per the schedule,” state’s advocate general Gurminder Singh said after the hearing. A detailed order is awaited.
The election is to take place for 13,000 panchayats on Tuesday. As per lawyers, the number of total petitions had gone up to 1,000 by the time the cases were taken up on Monday. These include 200 pleas in which the elections were stayed on October 9 and another 300 petitions were those which came up for hearing on October 11 but the hearing was deferred for Monday. The Remaining were fresh petitions. The lawyers said the order on videography of the poll process has not been modified. The state would have to implement directions issued about the videography of polls, particularly in 22 cases disposed of on October 11.
In most cases, the procedure adopted by the different administrations in rejecting the candidature for the posts of sarpanches/ panches was challenged. In some cases, there were allegations of use of force, coercion etc. Some petitioners had also sought to stay on the elections in view of large-scale allegations.
The state government’s team led by AG Gurminder Singh had questioned the maintainability of these petitions and argued that remedy for them lay before an election tribunal on account of a bar to interfere by the courts in election matters as enshrined under Article 243 (O) of the constitution.
On October 9, a vacation bench of the high court had stayed the election process of sarpanches/panches in 200 odd panchayats observing that “there was blatant abuse of power” on the part of state machinery.
The high court order is likely to be challenged. A bunch of lawyers, appearing for petitioners, said that they would approach the Supreme Court on Tuesday against the high court decision.
