Sarthak Umang
Published on: November 10, 2022 at 18:18 IST
On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court refused to stay the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections, which are planned to be held on December 4.
The State Election Commission (SEC) has already issued a notification on the same, and thus, it will remain unchanged and cannot be stayed by the court.
A division bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad said, “Once the election is notified, we can’t stay it.”
The State Election Commission had announced the election schedule for MCD, stating that the polling for the city’s 250 municipal wards will happen on December 4 and results will be declared on December 7.
On Wednesday, 3 petitions challenging the delimitation of wards and their reservation were being heard by the high court.
One more petition by a Congress leader challenging the delimitation is also listed.
The court issued notices to the Central government, State Election Commission, and State government and the batch of pleas have now been listed for hearing on December 15, along with another matter on a similar issue.
The plea moved by Sanjay Gupta contends that the State Election Commission has reserved the Municipal wards for Schedule Castes population in an arbitrary way and violating the basic tenets of the Constitution for the purpose of inserting Article 243T in the Constitution of India.
Previously, the Delimitation Committee had completed the exercise and submitted a draft report to the Centre on August 25.
Subsequently, on September 10, the Centre issued a notification fixing the total number of seats as 250, out of which 42 seats were reserved for members of Scheduled Caste in the Municipal Corporation.
A public notice was then issued asking the public and others to submit their suggestions or objections, if any, concerning this draft delimitation before October 3.
Last month, the court has issued a notice in a similar plea which argued that the delimitation exercise has been done without making serious variations in the formation of wards and “in complete ignorance of relevant aspects.”