High Court stays panchayat elections in Punjab over ‘blatant abuse of power’ by state
Several prospective candidates’ nominations were rejected without reason, leading to winners being declared even before polling commenced, the court noted.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has stayed panchayat elections in parts of Punjab, claiming a “blatant abuse of power” by the state’s Aam Aadmi Party government when nomination papers were filed by prospective candidates, reported Live Law on Thursday.
The polls were scheduled for October 15.
The court’s direction came in response to a batch of around 250 petitions.
A bench of Justices Sandeep Moudgil and Deepak Gupta noted that some candidates had won the elections unopposed even before polling could begin.
This came after returning officers rejected their opponents’ nomination papers, often without reason or on flimsy grounds.
In some cases, officials of the “governing party in the state” tore up the nomination papers of prospective candidates, only to claim that they had been lost.
Those who won the elections through such actions later celebrated with Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann or his party MLAs, the court said based on photographs that were submitted to it.
The court also held that no candidate could be declared a winner unopposed as this took away a citizen’s statutory right to vote for them.
The bench remarked that voters can exercise the NOTA (none of the above) option to reject a candidate and described the state government’s actions as “unconstitutional and abuse of process of law”.
“Action of the state of Punjab has not only imposed restrictions on such right of the voters and electorals but is also an attempt to destroy the basic structure of our constitution [with regard to] free and fair election as its essence,” the court said.
The court also noted that persons whose nominations had been rejected were not provided with the opportunity of a hearing, nor were any inquiries made to assuage doubts about why their nomination papers were not accepted.
Clerical errors and minor discrepancies of information in the nomination papers “are not even the grounds of disqualification under Sections 38 and 39 of the Act of the Punjab Panchayati Raj Act, 1994”, the court noted.
The matter will be heard next on October 16.
