पंजाब निकाय चुनाव में बैलेट पेपर इस्तेमाल को चुनौती देने वाली याचिका खारिज, दखल देने से SC का इनकार – supreme court rejects punjab local body elections ballot paper petition ntc ntyv

The Supreme Court on Monday completely rejected the petition filed against the Punjab State Election Commission’s decision to conduct local body elections through ballot paper. The court strongly reprimanded petitioner Ruchira Garg for approaching the court extremely late just a day before the elections and made it clear that it cannot destabilize or disrupt the entire ongoing election process at this juncture.

The special bench of the Supreme Court asked sharp questions to the lawyer of petitioner Ruchira Garg and said that elections are going to be held tomorrow, so what can be done at the last moment. The court said that the petitioner has no time left and it is not justified in any way to stop the entire election process at this last stage.

Commenting on the late arrival of the petitioner, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi said that there was no need to wait for the formal notification of the election schedule to be issued. You knew very well that local body elections were going to be held in the state, because even before this there had been several rounds of litigation in the courts on this issue.

The petitioner’s lawyer argued before the court that the local body elections in the state are being conducted through ballot paper, whereas the Supreme Court in its previous landmark judgment in the ADR case had clearly said that the use of EVMs should be the main standard of elections. The apex court also completely rejected the demand for appointing an independent observer for the elections, saying that this would be a very serious interference and they would not do so at all.

The Supreme Court was hearing a petition filed against the order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court which had dismissed Garg’s plea challenging the State Election Commission’s decision to switch to ballot papers from electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the upcoming Punjab local body elections.

Earlier, the Punjab State Election Commission (SEC) had informed the High Court that the local body elections were being conducted through ballot papers because the Election Commission (EC) had completely failed to provide the required number of EVM machines as per the schedule decided by them.

On the other hand, the counsel for the state government had strongly opposed this entire petition on the basis of its maintainability.

Let us tell you that voting for 104 municipal bodies including eight municipal corporations of Punjab will be held on May 26 and counting of votes will take place on May 29.

—- End —-