The State election Commission has represented to the Chennai High Court that it is not possible to conduct local elections before July. It is worth recalling the Chennai High Court had earlier ordered that the local elections must be conducted before 14th May.
The Secretary of the State Election Commission explained in the Chennai High Court on Thursday, 13th April that the commission would complete preparation of the electoral roll of local bodies by May-end, based on the timeline prescribed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC).
A chronological record of the issue of local elections so far:
1. The matter relates to an appeal against a single judge order on a writ petition filed by DMK organising secretary R S Bharathi.
2. The judge, who struck down the poll notification, originally directed that local body elections be completed by December 31, 2016.
3. The SEC filed an appeal, and after much nudging by the division bench agreed to complete the process by May 14.
4. Earlier this month, an attempt to win more time from a different division bench failed as the court made it clear the SEC would face contempt of court proceedings if it did not adhere to the single judge deadline of May 14.
5. The SEC then filed the present affidavit.
6. The SEC said it had initiated action for the preparation of photo electoral rolls for elections to local bodies and the work was being executed by NIC based on the assembly electoral roll as on January 5. Test data was handed over to NIC. SEC handed over to the NIC all assembly electoral roll data on January 30. The conversion of data from ECI format to NIC format is a must to facilitate multiple online data-entry works in all local institution to be done on NIC servers.
7. SEC explained that the data of 5.92 crore voters has to be demarcated and assigned specific wards in respective town panchayat, village panchayat, municipalities and corporation, it said. Correlation statement between the assembly electoral roll and local body electoral roll will be completed by last week of April.