Civic polls: HC reserves its order

THE DELHI High Court Friday reserved its order on the petitions challenging the State Election Commission’s notification, prescribing allocation of seats for reserved, women and general category candidates for the upcoming civic elections. The court also quashed the pleas against delimitation and said the notification finalising it would continue.

The SEC had, in January, issued a notification for the final delimitation of 272 wards. It also changed the allocation of seats in some wards and reserved four unreserved seats - one each in Sultanpur Majra and Gokulpuri, and three in Mongolpuri. The seat in Bawana, despite being reserved for Scheduled Tribes as per the 2012 poll rules, was made an unreserved seat.

Underscoring the changes and challenging their validity, a batch of petitions was filed against delimitation and allocation of seats.

Sumeet Pushkarna, standing counsel for the commission, said it was not feasible to continue with the 2012 rules as around 90 per cent of the ward boundaries have changed since the last polls andthatthedecisionondelimitationandallocationwastakenonly after going through recent data.

“The earlier formula of reserving one seat in the wards could also not be continued as there were four or less candidates in some wards. Rather than being result-oriented,the rules have been made strictly to facilitate the election process,” he said.

Highlighting the arithmetic of the situation, the counsel said there were a total of 272 seats. Assuming that there are four serious candidates from each would mean that there are a total of around 1,000 candidates.