CHENNAI: After a three-year gap, local body elections will finally take place in Tamil Nadu. Though the State Election Commission is likely to notify elections in the last week of November or in the first week of December, it is awaiting the directive from the Supreme Court for finalising the schedule.
Officials said they hope to complete the election process ahead of Pongal festival in January. The commission is expecting the directive from SC regarding a petition seeking extra time of four more weeks for notifying the elections. “Though the petition has been admitted, the Apex court is yet to take up the petition for hearing. Based on the SC directive, the commission will prepare the schedule for the elections,” official sources said.
As the civic body elections have been constantly postponed, many civic issues including garbage disposal and segregation, road conditions, streetlight maintenance etc have been left unattended. Also, it has been eight years since a new mayor was elected for Chennai. The delayed has affected overall civic maintenance of the state severely.
Sources further said the elections would be held in two phases - first phase in the last week of December and the second phase in the first week of January. The State Election Commissioner R Palanisamy is reviewing the State-wide arrangements every day by convening meetings, said officials.
Last time, the elections were scheduled to be held on October 17 and 19, 2016. However, the Madras High Court had quashed the two notifications issued by the State Election Commission following a petition from the DMK. Since then, the elections were postponed due to legal process and finally, the SEC has given an undertaking before the Supreme Court that the elections would be notified by October 31.
Meanwhile, the AIADMK has convened the meeting of the district secretaries and MLAs on November 6 to discuss the strategies of elections to local bodies. The seat-sharing talks is going to be tough for the AIADMK-led alliance as the BJP, PMK and DMDK are expected to put forth a strong demand for sizeable number of seats.
Ahead of the local body elections, the DMK has convened its general council to boost up the morale of the party cadre and the seat-sharing talks in the DMK-led front is expected to gain momentum after the general council meeting.