BHUBANESWAR: The BJP today moved the High Court challenging a notification issued by the state government changing Zilla Parishad election rules, contending that rules cannot be amended in the middle of the election process.
One of the BJP's Zilla Parishad members from Sundargarh district today filed a petition against the notification. The Panchayati raj department had received a notification on March 8 announced changes in
the Odisha Zilla Parishad Election Rules-1994.
As per the amended rules, an authorised agent of each political party, whose members will vote for the election of president or vice-president, will be allowed to verify ballot papers of his/her party members before they cast their votes.
Besides, according to the amended rules ZP members elected on party symbols will lose their membership if they vote against party whip.
Meanwhile, the change in the ZP election rules has come in for strong criticism from BJP. "How can the government make changes in the rules when the election process is on," Union Minister for
Tribal Affairs Jual Oram asked.
The BJD government has issued this "highly undemocratic" and "unconstitutional" notification to help its own party's candidates, Oram claimed.
Senior BJP leader and former law minister BB Harichandan also came down heavily on the state government for effecting such a change in the rules in the midst of the election process. "If the government wanted to change rules, it should have been done before the notification for the panchayat elections was issued on December 27," Harichandan told media persons here.
Harichandan said that government could have taken the assembly into confidence. He alleged that neither the assembly nor the cabinet has been informed about the decision to amend the election rules.
The ruling BJD, however, welcomed the notification. The new rules would help avoid horse trading as none can cross-vote in the ZP president and vice-president elections, BJD spokesman Amar Prasad Satpathy said.
BJP has challenged the supremacy of the BJD in the panchayat polls by emerging as the second largest party pushing the Congress to the third position. Of the 846 ZP seats for which polls were held in five phases from February 13, the BJD has won 473 seats and the BJP 297.