Madras High Court directs holding of Tamil Nadu civic polls by November 17

Chennai: The Madras High Court on Monday directed the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission to complete the local body elections by November 17.

The first bench comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar ordered the State Election Commission (SEC) to issue by September 18 the notification for the elections, originally slated to be held in October last year, and complete the entire process by November 17.

The bench was delivering its judgement on an appeal by the SEC against the order of a single judge directing it to hold the local body polls before December 31, 2016 and connected petitions.

However, the judges made it clear that this would be subject to the outcome of special leave petitions pending in the Supreme court on the matter.

The bench had reserved its orders on August one after going through a report submitted in sealed cover by the SEC complying with the court's July 26 directive.

The polls were slated to be held in October last year but cancelled by Justice N Kirubakaran on a petition by the DMK seeking among others appropriate reservation as per latest census and rotation of seats according to the norms.

He had on October four last year quashed the poll notification issued by the SEC and issued nine directions as per which the process was to be completed before December 31, 2016.

The SEC had filed an appeal against this order.

? The bench in its order said "it is incumbent upon the Election Commission and other authorities to carry out the mandate of the Constitution and to see that a new municipality is constituted in time and elections are conducted before the expiry of its duration of five years as specified in clause (1) of Article 243-U".

? "It is only when the municipality is dissolved for any other reason and the remainder of the period for which the dissolved municipality would have continued is less than six months, it shall not be necessary to hold any elections for constituting the municipality for such period."

? Rejecting the contention of the government that there was rain deficit and a severe drought situation prevailing in the state due to which personnel could not be deployed for election works, the bench said, "If personnel are deployed to deal with the drought, others would have to be brought in for deployment in connection with the elections".

B Kumar, counsel for the SEC, said some of the directions given by the Single Judge, including uploading of the details of the candidates, were practically not possible to implement considering the large number of candidates for civic polls and the affidavits and details of candidates might run to several pages and uploading of such huge and voluminous data might cause crashing of the website.

The bench then said, if need be, the capacity of the website might have to be increased.

"It is very much required by a voter to know about the details of the candidate to whom he is going to vote", the judges said.

Opposition parties had been criticising the state government over the delay in the conduct of the local body elections.