Kerala: Hold poll to new municipalities

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A day after the High Court’s adverse verdict, the  government on Friday shot off a letter to the State Election Commission  asking it to conduct elections to the newly-formed 28 municipalities and Kannur  Corporation.

The move is  intriguing since Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had refused to go in appeal and given  the impression of heeding the High Court directive to cooperate with the SEC.

The letter written by the Urban Affairs Department secretary,  which is controlled by the Muslim League, urged the commission to take steps to hold the elections.

The government is trying to apply pressure on the SEC since the court had left the polls to its discretion.

With the 28 new municipalities coming into being after additions and division of various panchayats and the process of ward delimitation yet to be completed, the possibility of holding elections to the newly-created  local bodies appears to be remote.

However , the government  has urged the SEC to convene a  meeting of  the State Delimitation Commission to expedite the process to ensure that elections are  held in a time-bound manner.

Experts say  the exercise involves wide-ranging changes in panchayats, block panchayats and district panchayats.

They say it would take  more than  two months to complete the exercise. Sources close to the SEC said it would be difficult to comply with the constitutional responsibility of putting in place the governing councils in local bodies by November 1 this year  if it went ahead with the completion of the delimitation exercise.

The SEC has made it clear that it would have to go by the November 1,  2010 delimitation of local bodies to  comply with the constitutional responsibility.

A  division bench  had on Thursday refused to stay a single bench order setting aside the state’s decision to constitute 69 panchayats and four municipalities as part of delimitation.