More Stories

Informist, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024

 

NEW DELHI - The Supreme Court Tuesday refused to stay the Punjab gram panchayat elections underway to elect "sarpanch" and "panch" for the respective villages. A Supreme Court Bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud said if the court stays the election process now, there will be complete chaos.

 

"How can we stay it now...Polls must have begun now! suppose we stay now, there will be complete chaos. Staying conduct of elections is a grave thing," said Chief Justice Chandrachud. The top court said staying the election would be a drastic step and the remedy would lie in an election petition before the high court.

 

On the petitioners saying that it was an unusual case, Chief Justice Chandrachud remarked that India has "unusual democracy also where we value elections. You have remedies in election petition. We will not stay, least of all when elections have begun. Tomorrow someone will want to stay parliamentary elections like this. We will list but no interim stay". 

 

On Monday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had dismissed a batch of over 1,000 petitions seeking cancellation of the Panchayat elections. The high court had also lifted its stay on 206 panchayats, allowing the elections to proceed as scheduled on Tuesday. The high court said that only the Election Commission of India has the authority to intervene in the electoral process.

 

The petitioners in the high court had argued that their nomination papers for the post of sarpanches were rejected in "an arbitrary and illegal manner". A petition by a candidate, Hardeep Singh, and others argued that they were aggrieved by "the arbitrary acts of the Punjab government for rejecting their candidature without passing any order and without according a personal hearing".

 

The petitioners had alleged that they had filed complete nomination papers, but the returning officer on the day of scrutiny said that their candidature could not be considered without giving any reason. "Since we are contesting against the ruling party candidates, unconstitutional and arbitrary acts are being committed to win the one-sided election," said the petitioners.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Vandana Hingorani

 

For users of real-time market data terminals, Informist news is available exclusively on the NSE Cogencis WorkStation.

 

Cogencis news is now Informist news. This follows the acquisition of Cogencis Information Services Ltd by NSE Data & Analytics Ltd, a 100% subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. As a part of the transaction, the news department of Cogencis has been sold to Informist Media Pvt Ltd.

 

Informist Media Tel +91 (11) 4220-1000

Send comments to feedback@informistmedia.com

 

© Informist Media Pvt. Ltd. 2024. All rights reserved.