NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Friday frowned on Himachal Pradesh HC’s repeated interference in the state govt’s decisions and said it appeared that the high court was not allowing the elected govt to function. SC warned that it would view such interference seriously in future.Despite these oral remarks, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said the HC had rightly rejected the Himachal govt’s reliance on the ongoing delimitation process to seek postponement of local body elections by six months. “Pendency of delimitation exercise cannot be a ground to seek postponement of elections,” the bench said.It also said the HC was right in saying that holding timely elections to urban local bodies, municipalities and nagar panchayats had been mandated by the Constitution. There are around 3,500 gram panchayats, 90 panchayat samitis, 11 zila parishads and 71 urban local bodies in HP, the majority of which go to polls this year.Taking into consideration the logistics and problems of accessibility to remote areas in winter, the bench extended the HC’s April 30 deadline for completion of local body elections by a month to May 31. Appearing for the petitioner, on whose plea the HC had asked the delimitation exercise to be completed before Feb 28, senior advocate Maninder Singh told the bench that the high court had set the deadline keeping in mind the fact that nation-wide Census work would commence from May 1. It was the state election commission that had cited this fact before SC, he said.For the state govt, senior advocate V Giri said the HC should have kept the logistics in mind while setting the deadline for completion of civic body elections.The CJI-led bench in its order said, “The direction by the HC that elections to local bodies are required to be held after the expiry of their tenure as per constitutional mandate does not warrant any interference.””However, having regard to logistic difficulties, we modify the time schedule and direct that all preparatory work be completed before March 31 instead of Feb 28. Elections shall be conducted within eight weeks thereafter, that is positively before May 31. No application for extension of time will be entertained,” the bench said.
