The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Maharashtra state election commission (SEC) to complete polls to 376 local bodies within four months.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N. Kotiswar Singh asked the SEC to issue the necessary notification within four weeks, adding that the elections would be based on the reservation policy that existed before the 2022 report submitted by the Banthia Commission, headed by former chief secretary Jayant Kumar Banthia.
It said the outcome of the elections would be subject to the apex court’s decision on pending petitions challenging the commission’s report that had recommended 27 per cent reservation for the OBCs.
Following multiple petitions against the 27 per cent OBC quota recommended by the Banthia panel, the apex court had in 2022 restrained the SEC from notifying the local body polls until the top court examined the validity of the recommendations.
Since then, elections to gram panchayats, zilla parishad and other local bodies have not been held in the state.
When the matter came up for consideration on Tuesday, the bench said bureaucrats could not be allowed to occupy key positions in local bodies as it would defeat the very purpose of the constitutional mandate of having democracy at the grassroots level.
Justice Kant, heading the bench, said: “Why can’t elections be held as per the earlier position without prejudice to the contention of the petitioners? Today, all bureaucrats are occupying all the municipal corporations and panchayats and are taking major policy decisions. Because of all this litigation, the democratic process has been stalled.... Officials have no accountability.”
Solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Maharashtra government, and senior advocate Indira Jaising, representing some of the petitioners, agreed with the court’s view that bureaucrats were running the municipalities and elections would facilitate the return of the political leadership.
Jaising pointed out that if the Banthia commission report was accepted, it would result in the denotification of 34,000 posts.
The bench said it was only concerned with the conduct of the polls. It said disputes regarding the inclusion or exclusion of people in or from the list of candidates might not be a major issue as the affected persons could always contest the next polls.
“After all, it is an election for a particular tenure,” the bench observed.