The High Court on Monday posted the final hearing on the batch of petitions that had questioned the propriety of the ordinance and G.O.s through which the term of the State Election Commissioner (SEC) has been curtailed from five to three years, and a new SEC was appointed, to April 28 .
Chief Justice J.K. Maheswari and Justice M. Satyanarayana Murthy heard the arguments through video-conferencing and insisted that all the parties should conclude their arguments by April 27 to decide the matter on April 28.
According to Advocate-General (A-G) S. Sriram, the court refused to pass interim orders as requested by N. Ramesh Kumar who is the main petitioner, and also rejected the pleas that notices be served to the offices of the Governor and Chief Minister. The A-G was directed to file an additional counter by April 24.
Common counter
A common counter-affidavit was filed by Principal Secretary (Panchayat Raj) Gopal Krishna Dwivedi on April 17. He stated that the primary objective of the ordinance was to reform the local body election process by altering the composition of the office of SEC and the cessation of office of Mr. Ramesh Kumar was by virtue of a change in policy.
It may be noted that Mr. Ramesh Kumar ceased to be SEC upon the promulgation of the ordinance (No. 5 of 2020) and was quickly replaced by V. Kanagaraj, retired judge, Madras High Court, who is also supposed to file an affidavit by April 27.
In his petition, Mr. Ramesh Kumar alleged that the ordinance was issued with the mala fide intention to remove him for allegedly not consulting the government before announcing deferment of the civic polls and for taking certain other decisions that were not to its liking.
