Tamil Nadu may see the much delayed elections to the local bodies materialising this year as the Madras High Court ordered the State Election Commission to submit the schedule for election by Monday (August 6). The First Bench of Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar warned the SEC that failure to do so would lead the court to initiate contempt of court proceedings against them.
“This is our ultimatum,” the justices told the Election Commissioner Malik Feroze Khan after the court witnessed the judges taking the officials to task for not conducting the election as per schedule. Elections to the local bodies in Tamil Nadu should have been held before December 2016.
Though the SEC had declared the schedule for election and chose October 2016 to finalise the electoral process, the process hit a road block with the opposition DMK approaching the court with procedural errors. The whole process came to a standstill after the filing of nominations, scrutiny and last date of withdrawal. Since then the ruling AIADMK and the DMK were engaged in a legal war which saw the Court issuing directives after directives to the government and SEC to finalise the process of election.