Chandigarh, 20 October, 2024: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ordered the State of Punjab and its election commission to begin the election process for municipal bodies within 15 days, without needing to conduct any new delimitation. This decision is important as elections for 42 local bodies are coming up after their five-year terms have ended.
“This court has no hesitation in issuing a writ of mandamus directing the State Election Commission, Punjab, and the State of Punjab, to immediately comply with the constitutional requirement and start the election process in all municipalities and municipal corporations within 15 days from today,” the court stated.
Citing Article 243E and Article 243U of the Constitution, which address the duration of panchayats and municipalities, Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Anil Kshetarpal emphasized that elections must be completed before the end of their five-year terms. “Article 243U(3)(b) says elections must be held within six months of the municipality’s dissolution,” they added.
The case considered whether delaying elections for municipalities and municipal councils due to ongoing delimitation was acceptable. The state argued that it needed to set up delimitation boards for each municipality to carry out surveys, create rough maps, and then finalize delimitation. It noted that boards for 44 out of 47 municipalities were already formed, while three were still pending, and it would take 16 weeks to finish this entire process.
However, the court pointed out that previous attempts to carry out delimitation were overturned in the case of “Rajesh Kumar Sharma versus State of Punjab.” Therefore, they argued that new delimitation was unnecessary since it had already been approved on March 31, 2021, without justification for starting the process again.
The court said that there was no major population increase or changes in municipal boundaries that required fresh delimitation.
The court also stressed that the Constitution prohibits using the delimitation process as a reason to delay elections.
