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Dealing with the apparent anomaly in reservation of seats for backward classes in upcoming Puducherry Municipality election, Madras High Court today said that elections cannot be allowed to be conducted unlawfully merely on the basis of urgency.

A plea had been filed before the court pointing out that instead of wards with the higher percentages of Scheduled Castes population, wards with lesser percentages of have been declared as reserved constituencies for the Local body elections scheduled to be held on October 21, 25 and 28.

A bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice P.D.Audikesavalu directed the authorities to again appear on Monday, October 4 with the hope that by then they would have been appropriately addressed the anomalies that have come to light.

Also, court decided not to disturb the poll schedule as the date to receive nominations for the election is till October7.

During the hearing, ASGI R. Sankaranarayanan said that the reservation of seats has only been done as per the norms and no rules were broken. However, court felt not satisfied with his submissions and wondered whether the relevant provisions of the concerned law were not made considering that after each 10 years, there will be delimitation and new census.

This is the first election being conducted on the basis of the 2011 census where Local body elections in nine newly-created districts of Tamil Nadu are also scheduled to be held.

On Thursday, comparing the present situation with anarchy, court had said that UT cannot go ahead with the election on the ground that the petition has not been served and the papers have not been received.

Court had observed so, upon submissions of Mr. V Chandrasekaran, appearing for the State Election Commission and Government Pleader appearing for the Union Territory that they have not received copy of the plea filed.

Accordingly, court had directed for all papers to be relied upon by the petitioners to be forwarded to them and had listed the matter for today.

Also, on September 29, court had extended the date fixed for filing nomination from September 30 to October 4.

Case Title: J.Pregash Kumar v. The Union of India and 2 Others.