High Court stays panchayat elections in Punjab over ‘blatant abuse of power’ by state

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has stayed the panchayat elections in parts of Punjab, flagging “blatant abuse of power” by the state’s Aam Aadmi Party government at the stage of filing of nomination papers, reported Live Law on Thursday.

The polls were scheduled for October 15.

The court’s direction came on a batch of around 250 petitions.

A bench of Justices Sandeep Moudgil and Deepak Gupta noted that some candidates had won the “unopposed” elections even before polling could begin after returning officers rejected their opponents’ nomination papers, often without reason or on flimsy grounds.

In some cases, officials of the “governing party in the state” tore up the nomination papers of prospective candidates, only to claim that they had been lost.

Those who “won” the elections through such actions later celebrated with Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann or his party MLAs, the court said based on photographs that were submitted to it.

The court also held that no candidate could be declared a winner “unopposed” as this takes away a citizen’s statutory right to vote for them.

The bench remarked that voters can exercise the NOTA [none of the above] option to reject a candidate and described the state government’s actions as “unconstitutional and abuse of process of law”.

“Action of the state of Punjab has not only imposed...

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