Petition withdrawing SEC rights regarding local self-body elections challenged in Supreme Court

Aurangabad, April 7:

The two Acts passed by the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly has been challenged in the Supreme Court.The Acts withdrawing the right of State Election Commission (SEC)to delimit the prabhags and cancelling the election process were passed on March 11. The hearing on the petition will be held in the Apex Court on April 21.

The hearing on petition filed by Aurangabad’s Pawan Shinde and others was held before the Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice A M Khanvilkar, Justice Abhay Oak and Justice C T Ravikumar on Thursday.

Earlier, the Apex Court, in its order on March 3, has ordered the SEC, to conduct the pending local self government bodies elections in Maharashtra on priority.Accordingly, the SEC has started the election process.However, the state government, tabled the proposals before the legislature stating to withdraw the rights of SEC to delimit the prabhags.It became an act after the Governor okayed it on March 11.

Meanwhile, it is for sure that the elections are being delayed for indefinite period as the SEC could not start the election process until the formation of prabhags.Today, the elections of more than 2000 local self-bodies are to be conducted in the state. Instead of public representative, the local self-bodies are governed by the administrator.

The petitioners underlined that the Acts passed by the state legislature are unconstitutional and illegal.Hence they should be scrapped. They requested the court to grant a stay on the implementation of Acts and order the SEC to complete the election process on priority.

Adv Devdutt Palodkar, Adv Shashibhushan Aadgaonkar, Adv Parmeshwar and Adv Kailas Autade voiced on behalf of the petitioners; Adv Ajit Kadethankar represented the SEC, veteran legal expert Shekhar Nafade and Adv Rahul Chitnis pleaded on behalf of the state government.