CHENNAI : High Court that it is not in a position to hold elections to the local bodies in view of the amendments made recently to the TN Local Bodies Acts. The provision, which was earlier made available to conduct the elections without completing delimitation process, based on the latest census, has been removed. Hence, the elections, without competing for the exercise, cannot be conducted, the State Election Commission told the bench of Justices M Sathyanarayanan and M Sundar, when arguments on the contempt application from the DMK resumed on Monday.
“In view of the statutory mandate, we have already commenced the delimitation process based on the 2011 census. It would be completed by the end of this month and a detailed proposal will be made to the state government. Once the state approves the proposal, the next stage would be to conduct the street-wise survey to ascertain the SC/STs concentration for reservation of wards, as the data is not available with the Directorate of Census. This would take at least two more months,” SEC senior counsel C S Vaidyanathan said.
Once the reservation is approved by the state, the election notification can be issued and the entire election process completed within 75 days, he added. Recording the submissions, the special bench asked Aryama Sundaram, senior counsel for the state government, about the time required for approving the delimitation proposal. Sundaram replied that he could give only a tentative time after getting the proposal from the delimitation committee. It depends upon the time required for the scrutiny of the proposal. “I would suggest to the court to post the matter a week after August 31 so that we can go through the proposal and will be in a position to give the time required,” he added.DMK senior counsel P Wilson is expected to commence his arguments on Tuesday.