Secretary Urban Development Nitin Bhadauria appeared today in various PILs filed by the Uttarakhand High Court regarding not conducting civic elections on time in the state. He assured the court that municipal elections would be conducted in the state within 6 months.
The division bench of Acting Chief Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari and Justice Vivek Bharti Sharma, along with recording the statement of the Secretary, has kept both the petitions pending and fixed the next hearing of the case for April 16.
Let us tell you that Jaspur resident Mo. Aneesh and others filed a PIL in the High Court and said that the tenure of the municipalities and municipal bodies had ended on December 2, but even after a month, the government did not hold elections. Didn’t announce the program to get it done, on the contrary they appointed their own administrators in the bodies.
Due to the appointment of the administrator, the common people are facing many problems, while a PIL is already pending in the court for the cognizance of the government to conduct elections to the local bodies.
The PIL states that the government has no right to appoint administrators after the tenure of the bodies ends. An administrator is appointed when a body is dissolved. Even in that situation, the government is required to hold elections within six months. Here it is the opposite. The bodies have completed their tenure, but the schedule for holding elections has not been announced yet. On top of that, they appointed their own administrators in the bodies, which is against the Constitution.
Lok Sabha and Assembly elections are held at the scheduled time but why are the civic elections not held at the scheduled time. According to the rules, the election schedule was to be announced six months before the end of the tenure of the bodies, which has not happened yet.