Punjab will soon witness another election - the Panchayat polls as the stay on issuing of notification for the polls was vacated by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday. The election is expected to be held on July 3.
The court dismissed the plea of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) challenging the delimitation of wards in the State.
After losing the legal battle, Punjab Congress would now once again face the ballot test in the Panchayat polls. The High Court had stayed the election process for the Panchayat polls on May 29, while giving a go-ahead to the Zila Parishad and Block Samiti elections, which were already notified by the Commission.
However, the High Court has issued a set of guidelines to be implemented, but not in these elections. Giving a year’s time, the High Court has asked the State government to undertake an exercise of allotting the house numbers to all houses in all villages of the State after the elections. A division bench of Justice Jasbir Singh and Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain has set one-year deadline for the State to complete the exercise after setting it out after elections, and furnish the status report for the same.
The bench stated that the panchayat secretary of the concerned gram panchayat would maintain the record of the house numbers and update the information in case of any change. Punjab Congress has for long been facing defeat after defeat. In fact, the change of guard, by putting Partap Singh Bajwa at the helm of party affairs replacing former Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, failed to work wonders for the State Congress.
Meanwhile, Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal and Deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal hailed the verdict of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which dismissed the petition filed by PPCC president Partap Singh Bajwa challenging the Wardbandi of Panchayats of Punjab.
While the CM described the verdict as “defeat for politics of obstructionism”, Sukhbir Singh Badal said it was “a pathetic self-goal” by PPCC president Partap Singh Bajwa, and added that the Congress was now “a compulsive loser, facing defeat in courts of law after defeats in people’s courts.”