Aurangabad, Feb 2:
The Supreme Court will conduct a hearing on the petition challenging the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) election procedure will be held on March 9. The hearing postponed as out of eight respondents in the petition, three of them submitted their affidavits, while five had not submitted their papers before the Apex Court. Hence it is now crystal clear that the civic elections could not be held in March-April 2021.
Earlier, the AMC general elections were scheduled to be held in April 2020, but due to Covid-19 pandemic situation, the state government postponed it. In the meantime, former corporator Sameer Rajurkar and other political leaders challenged the election procedure completed by the State Election Commission (SEC) in the Supreme Court. Accordingly, the Apex Court granted a status quo on it. As per the petition, there are eight respondents. Of which, the SEC, the AMC and the municipal commissioner had submitted their affidavits on Tuesday. The remaining five respondents are the officials, who
had conducted hearing upon the objections invited on the election procedure. They are sugar commissioner, district collector, divisional commissioner, Government of Maharashtra and AMC's deputy commissioner (revenue) and they are yet to submit their affidavits, said the experts. As a result, no hearing was conducted in connection with the petition on Tuesday. The matter is pending with the registrar. For the submission of the remaining five affidavits, the hearing has been scheduled to be held after five weeks (March 5).
It may be noted that during last month, the government's representatives were hinting of holding AMC elections in March-April. It is now clear that the chances are bleak. Besides, the holy month of Ramzan is beginning from April 12. Hence the two important parties of the Maha Vikas Aghadi would not give their consent to hold elections in April.