The State Election Commission (SEC) has deferred the local body elections by six weeks due to the threat of COVID-19 and decided to continue the process from where it stopped in respect of ZPTCs and MPTCs and urban local bodies after six weeks or after the COVID threat recedes whichever is earlier.
The conduct of elections in two phases for the village panchayats for which notifications were scheduled to be issued on March 15 and 17 has been kept in abeyance, the SEC stated in its notification.
Announcing this at a press conference here on Sunday, State Election Commissioner N. Ramesh Kumar said the political parties had requested him at a meeting held on March 6 to postpone the elections due to the outbreak of coronavirus in several parts of the country and public gatherings taking place across the towns and villages for elections.
The commission had taken inputs from senior health functionaries, who indicated that health safeguards needed to be put in place immediately to avoid large public gatherings in order to contain the possible spread of coronavirus.
Mr. Ramesh Kumar said the Central government has declared its outbreak as a notified disaster prompting necessary measures by the States.
Movement of voters
He also observed that there was a likelihood of the movement of a large number of voters from Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Odisha, which could aggravate the situation.
Citing a Supreme Court judgment, Mr. Ramesh Kumar said the elections could be postponed for genuine supervening difficulties and exceptional circumstances such as natural disasters or man-made calamities such as rioting or (L&O) breakdown, till normalcy was restored.
He said the decision to put the elections on hold has been taken in view of the challenge posed by COVID-19. Several northern States took steps against large congregations in public schools and Telangana and Karnataka also took containment measures.