No Emergent Crisis Or Natural Calamity: Punjab & Haryana HC Orders To Conduct Chandigarh Mayor Elections On Jan 30, Quashes Postponement Order

The Punjab and Haryana High Court set aside the order postponing the Chandigarh Mayor Elections and directed the same to be conducted on January 30, 2024.

The Court was dealing with a batch of two writ petitions pertaining to the elections to the posts of Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor, and Deputy Mayor of the Municipal Corporation, Chandigarh.

A Division Bench of Justice Sudhir Singh and Justice Harsh Bunger said, “One could have understood the situation, if there was any emergent crisis or natural calamity. However, there being none, we are constrained to observe that the grounds to defer the elections in question, are totally absurd and frivolous. A perusal of the letter dated 18.01.2024 (Annexure R.4 with the reply of respondent Nos.1 and 2 in CWP-1350- 2024), would manifest that the Director General of Police, U.T., Chandigarh, had only observed regarding likelihood that as and when the elections are going to be held, a large number of supporters of all the major political parties, may gather at the Municipal Corporation Office, Chandigarh, which may create law and order situation and possibility of clashes amongst their supporters, cannot be ruled out.”

The Bench observed that the apprehensions in the letter are not that grave to fall within the definition of emergent crisis or natural calamity and also leading to a situation which could not have been addressed by the Administration.

Senior Advocate Gurminder Singh represented the petitioner while Senior Standing Counsel Anil Mehta represented the respondents.

Earlier, a writ petition was filed praying for the issuance of directions to the Deputy Commissioner, Union Territory, Chandigarh to ensure free and fair Mayor elections which were scheduled to be held on January 18 with a further prayer that a Court Commissioner be appointed to supervise the said election process. The said petition was disposed of and in spite of an undertaking given by the Director General of Police (DGP) and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), the elections were not held on the said date. Hence, another petition was filed before the High Court.

The High Court in the above context noted, “Upon considering the letter dated 18.01.2024 and also the incident report dated 19.01.2024, it is observed that the contents thereof do not disclose any emergent crisis or natural calamity, for which the elections had to be postponed. It is evident that the apprehensions expressed in the letter dated 18.01.2024 (R.4 above) only pertains to the supporters of the different political parties gathering at the venue and the incident report dated 19.01.2024 (R.7 above), refers to the police commandos of other State, present at the venue of the elections on 16.01.2024.”

The Court further said that the mandate of the Constitution as regards the elections to various bodies, including the Municipal Corporations, cannot be allowed to be put on hold, without any justifiable and reasonable ground. It added that since the grounds on which the elections have been deferred are unjustified and unreasonable and the very fact that it has been deferred for 18 long days, adds irrationality to it.

“… we have given the respondents patient hearing and sufficient opportunity to rectify the said wrong, but to no avail. We, thus, hold that the impugned order is totally unreasonable, unjustified and arbitrary”, it held.

Accordingly, the High Court allowed the petition, quashed the impugned order, and issued necessary directions.

Cause Title- Kuldeep Kumar v. U.T., Chandigarh and others (Neutral Citation: 2024:PHHC:009914-DB)

Appearance:

Petitioner: Advocates Ferry Sofat, RPS Bara, Gaurav Garg Dhuriwala, and K.S. Kharbanda.

Respondents: Senior Advocate Chetan Mittal, PP Manish Bansal, APP Rajeev Anand, Advocates Sanjiv Ghai, Sumeet Jain, Himanshu Arora, Pradeep Sharma, Rohit Kaushik, Nishant Indal, Kunal Mulwani, and Navjit Singh.

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