Jharkhand Rural Development minister Alamgir Alam has said that the Jharkhand government may decide to conduct the Panchayat elections in Jharkhand soon. The minister said that the schedule of the election may be announced in February and there is the possibility of elections being held in March. The Minister informed this while responding to a query as to whether and when the government plans to complete the elections. Alam said that due to Covid 19 pandemic the government was unable to conduct the election. He said that while the pandemic posed a challenge; the government diverted its entire attention and machinery to tackle the situation. He said that it was impossible to conduct any election in such a situation. The Panchayat election was scheduled to be completed in December last year. The government through a notification extended the tenure of Panchayat bodies as the stop-gap arrangement.
According to the official sources, the notification for the Panchayat election may be issued any time after February 15. The State election body will be asked to revise the voter lists through the DC of the concerned districts.
Meanwhile, the Jharkhand High Court has asked the Jharkhand government to explain why the provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 or PESA were not included in the Panchayati Raj Act of Jharkhand. The bench of Chief Justice Dr. Ravi Ranjan and Justice Sujeet Narayan Prasad asked the government while hearing a PIL questioning the legality of the Panchayati Raj Act in Jharkhand. The court fixed February 4 as the next date of hearing and by this time the Jharkhand government is supposed to file the reply.