Supreme Court Sets Up Deadline Of September 15 To Conduct Tamil Nadu Local Body Polls

The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted the State Election Commission an extension till September 15, 2021 to delimit the nine newly constituted districts in accordance with law and hold elections for their panchayats at the villages intermediate and district levels.

Vacation bench of Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice Aniruddha Bose while disposing of the application filed in the plea preferred by S Shankar further directed to publish/ notify the election schedule and result before September 15, 2021.

“The Constitutional mandate to conduct elections in the time bound manner cannot be defeated in this manner.”, Court observed.

Senior Counsel Mr. P.S.Narasimha, appearing for the State Election Commission of India argued that the tenure of the local bodies had come to an end in 2018-19.

The Court also took note of the fact that the State instead of four months time to delimit the nine newly constituted districts in accordance with law and thereafter hold elections for their panchayats at the village intermediate and district levels on 6.12.2019 had taken little more than eighteen months and were further seeking 6 months time to complete the entire exercise of conducting elections.

On December 11, 2019, the bench of former Chief Justice SA Bobde, Justice Abdul Nazeer and Justice Sanjiv Khanna had directed the Election Commission of India to conduct impending elections of all wards and offices by implying 2011 census irrespective of the number of seats determined by the delimitation Commission after the delimitation exercise within 3 months. However the state had taken more than eighteen months and had furt

On December 4, 2020, the Supreme Court bench of former Chief Justice SA Bobde, Justice AS Bopanna and Justice V Ramasubramanian had granted an extension of six months to comply with the Court’s order dated December 11, 2019.

Case Title: S Shankar v. Election Commission of India