The legal battle over the conduct of zilla parishad and mandal parishad elections in Andhra Pradesh seems to be far from over.
More than a month after the single judge of the state high court cancelling the elections to zilla parishads and mandal parishads (block parishads) in the state and ordering fresh polls, the division bench of the same high court gave a stay on the order.
Acting on a petition filed by state election commissioner Neelam Sawhney, the division bench stayed order given by Justice M Satyanarayana on May 21, calling for fresh elections on the ground that the SEC had not followed the Supreme Court ruling while holding the polls.
The division bench, however, did not grant relief to the state government or the SEC on declaration of results for the elections held on April 8 and the status quo would continue till the petition is disposed of.
The court posted the case to July 27 stating that it required a comprehensive study.
“In any case, fresh elections cannot be conducted now in the present pandemic situation. So, the SEC can wait till the final verdict is given,” the division bench said.
The single judge bench of the high court ruled that as per the Supreme Court ruling, there should be at least four weeks gap between the election notification and the polling date.
Justice Murthy set aside the notification issued by state election commissioner Neelam Sawhney on April 1 for the conduct of elections on April 8, with a gap of just one week.
He ordered that the SEC issue fresh notification for the conduct of the elections all over again.
In all, there are 660 zilla parishad territorial constituencies (ZPTCs) and 9,984 mandal parishad territorial constituencies (MPTCs) in the Andhra Pradesh, of which as many as 126 ZPTCs and 2,363 MPTCs were elected unanimously during the beginning of the election process in March 2020, before it was indefinitely postponed due to outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic.
