Municipal elections in Punjab on December 21, nominations from tomorrow

The elections are being held after a two-year delay. This postponement of the Punjab municipal corporation elections has put the Bhagwant Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in a difficult position. On November 11, the Supreme Court directed the government to conduct the polls within eight weeks.

The Punjab government faced criticism for delaying panchayat elections. Following a reprimand from the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the elections were held on October 15.

The Opposition had been claiming that the Mann government, which suffered a setback in the recent Lok Sabha elections when it only won three seats, was delaying elections because it was afraid of conducting them.

On October 19, the Punjab and Haryana High Court instructed the Punjab government to conduct elections for all five municipal corporations and 43 councils in the state. The court ordered that the election dates be announced within two weeks. The last elections for these bodies took place in January 2018, and their terms concluded in January 2023.

The AAP government then challenged the high court’s order in the Supreme Court, contending that the municipal corporation elections could not be conducted without a fresh delimitation exercise.

A Supreme Court bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan partially modified the High Court’s order. They stated that the Punjab government’s reliance on the pending delimitation was misguided, especially since there had been no significant changes in population or municipal boundaries.

“No question of delimitation…You first go and hold the elections. There are two Supreme Court judgments against you. Law mandates that you start the process (of elections) before expiry of the (five-year) term (of the civic bodies),” the bench observed after hearing submissions by Punjab Advocate General Gurminder Singh and senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi.