JAIPUR: As the Rajasthan High Court has stayed panchayat body elections in five panchayats of three districts—Kota, Karauli and Baran, owing to a petition filed in the court challenging the delimitation of the panchayats, the state election commission (SEC) will reply to the court on August 13 saying that “as per the Supreme Court direction, the commission is bound to complete the panchayat body polls in the state by October 31”.
The panchayati raj department will also give its reply to the court in the matter on the same day. “We will reply to the court that the commission is prepared to conduct elections and as per SC direction, we have to complete it by October 31. If anything specific is required of the commission, we will urge the court to let us know. We will request the court to permit us to conduct the elections,” sad a SEC official. SEC had on Thursday announced the elections for zila parishad and panchayat samiti members of six districts—Bharatpur, Dausa, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Sawai Madhopur and Sirohi.
Polling will be held in three phases—August 26, August 29 and September 1 and the counting of votes will be done on September 4. The polls in Alwar, Baran, Dholpur, Karauli and Kota will be announced by SEC after the final publication of the electoral roll on August 25.
“We have announced the elections for those districts where the final voters’ list has been published. In Ganganagar, due to reorganization of Lalgarh Jattan nagar palika, the panchayats have got affected. Hence, delimitation of election areas in Sadulsahar panchayat samiti and reservation of seats have to be redone,” Ashok Kumar Jain, deputy secretary, SEC, had earlier said.
Jaipur DEO suspends leaves of employees: In view of the panchayat body polls, district election officer (panchayat) and district collector Antar Singh Nehra on Friday issued an order to suspend all kinds of leaves of the government employees in the district with immediate effect.
