High Court’s order on urban body elections: Delimitation and voters ratio in Shahdol Napa is not correct, elections should be held after removing discrepancies

After the order of the High Court issued in the context of Shahdol municipality, the election of the municipality may be postponed for a few months. It has been clearly stated in the order that re-counting of voters should be done and elections should be conducted only after the reservation process after ward delimitation.

The Election Commission had started the election process for the elections to be held in the Municipal Council of Budhar, Jaisinghnagar, including the municipality Shahdol. The administration has also done the process of reservation of wards in the past. After which the names of the candidates also started appearing in all the three bodies. Political parties were also involved in their victory multiplier. Meanwhile, the order of the High Court stopped everything.

petition was filed in 2017

In the year 2017, a petition was filed by Manoj Gupta, resident of Shahdol, tax advisor and district general secretary, regarding the discrepancies in municipal delimitation and population ratio. At the same time, the second petition in this regard was filed by Senior Advocate Dinesh Dixit. Hearing Dixit’s petition, the High Court Jabalpur gave this decision on August 17.

Election held in 39 wards instead of 34

Advocate Dixit said that the process of delimitation done regarding the wards of Shahdol Municipality is not fair. Not only this, the number of wards that the municipality sent to the above offices was 34. When the wards were delimited, their number increased to 39. It was not fair and even in a fair manner. The delimitation regarding the number of wards itself is under doubt.

200 to 300% difference in the number of voters

Not only this, there are some such wards under the municipal area, if compared with each other, there is a difference of 200 to 300% in their population, especially in the number of voters. The court, after perusing the facts presented, agreed with them and clarified it. If the process of election i.e. notification or date has not been announced, then this order will be applicable. After removing these discrepancies, the election will be concluded.

After considering the delimitation and the number of voters, after dividing the population of the area into all the wards, only 15% of the population can differ in the population of the wards. There is a clear order that if the proportion of population is more than this, then it is not justified.

Here, it is also revealed that, till now no announcement has been made in this regard from the Election Commission and the local election branch. However, the preparations for the elections have already started. The date of election and notification has not been issued yet. In such a case the order of the court shall be deemed to have been made.