AP HC sets aside SEC notification on polls to local bodies

The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Friday set aside the State Election Commissions (SEC) April 1 notification on the conduct of elections to mandal and zilla parishad territorial constituencies.The court said it was illegal, arbitrary and violative of the direction issued by the Supreme Court.The High Court directed the SEC to issue a fresh notification resuming the election process from where it was stopped in March 2020. It said the April 1 notification was illegal as it was issued what the court said was to scuttle the level-playing field of candidates of Jana Sena Party or retard the progress of free and fair election.
The court observed that the recent situation is a fine example of democratic backsliding and said the impugned notification was issued by State Election Commissioner Nilam Sawhney in deliberate and intentional violation of the Supreme Court direction of March 18, 2020. The State Election Commissioner, who worked as Chief Secretary to the State, being a senior-most retired IAS Officer, could not understand the simple direction issued by the Supreme Court in the right perspective, which creates doubt as to her suitability and fitness to the post of Election Commissioner, Justice M Satyanarayana Murthy remarked. Such act of  SEC can be described as democratic backsliding, it is also known as autocratisation and de-democratisation, he observed. The court, however, declined to order the election process afresh from the stage of nominations, as pleaded by the petitioner Jana Sena Party. As a Division Bench of the High Court, comprising Chief Justice Arup Kumar Goswami and Justice C Praveen Kumar, gave the green signal, elections to MPTCs and ZPTCs were completed as per schedule on April 8 this year but the counting process was yet to be taken up in accordance with the court order.