Civic polls: Orders reserved on contempt plea

The first bench comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar before whom arguments prevailed for a second day, reserved its orders after dispensing with the appearance of both the commissioner and Secretary of TNSEC. 

Senior Counsel P Wilson appearing on behalf of the DMK contended that no legislation can seek to disobey court orders and there existed no urgency for the government to take the ordinance route especially when the court had fixed the date for delivering its order. Noting that the constitutional mandate cannot be annulled by legislature that too by an executive ordinance, the DMK’s counsel submitted that owing to the failure of TNSEC to hold local body elections as many as 1.72 lakh public offices had been held to ransom with 5.9 crore voters unable to elect their representatives. 

He said the Centre was also holding back funds meant for local bodies as a democratically elected body was not in place. He reiterated that the amendments brought about by repealing the provisions pertaining to delimitation and insisting at a later stage that delimitation ought to be done as per the 2011 census revealed a deliberate attempt to delay the process of holding the elections. 

However, senior counsel AL Somayaji appearing on behalf of TNSEC contended that state had come up with the ordinances enabling taking up the delimitation exercise as per the 2011 consensus and with the court order not specifying as to whether the election ought to be held as per the delimitation done by the 2001 census or 2011 census, TNSEC was caught between two interpretations.