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SC gives green signal to Tamil Nadu civic polls
Elections to village panchayats will be held in two phases on December 27 and 30. Elections to town Panchayats, municipalities and the city corporations would be announced later.
The decks for elections to the local bodies in Tamil Nadu have been cleared by the Supreme Court’s Wednesday order to hold the December 27 and 30 polls as per the 2011 census.
The opposition parties in Tamil Nadu led by the DMK had petitioned the Supreme Court seeking postponement of the civic polls alleging the state election commission had used 1991 census data for the delimitation and other poll-related determinations like reservations in wards etc, when the 2011 census data should have been used.
A bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde gave the nod to elections after the Tamil Nadu government confirmed using the 2011 census figures for all relevant exercises linked to the upcoming panchayat elections in the state.
“This order would serve the ends of justice and the cause of free and fair local bodies’ elections in the state,” the CJI said.
The Congress was represented by former finance minister P Chidambaram, who was released on bail in the INX Media case only a few days ago.
The Tamil Nadu state election commission (SEC) has already issued the notification with a truncated schedule for the civic polls and nominations have commenced on Monday.
As per the schedule, elections to village panchayats will be held in two phases on December 27 and 30. Elections to town Panchayats, municipalities and the city corporations would be announced later.
This was the second notification for the civic polls as the election commission had to cancel the earlier one issued on December 2 after the apex court asked it to hold separate elections in the nine newly-formed districts while hearing DMK’s allegation that delimitation exercise had not been carried out properly in the newly carved districts.
Only a few thousand candidates filed nominations since Monday for the more than one lakh posts to be filled. Now that the Supreme Court has cleared the hurdles, nominations might gather momentum.
