MOHALI: The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a notice to the Punjab government over the delimitation of wards in Mohali. The notice is returnable within two weeks.
The division bench of Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde, Justice A S Bopanna and Justice V Ramasubramanian—while hearing a petition challenging a Punjab and Haryana high court order that dismissed the plea of the petitioners against the delimitation process—issued directions to the local bodies department of Punjab to file a reply in this regard. The petition has been filed by Sukhdev Singh Patwari, Bachan Singh and others.
The HC had on December 16 dismissed the petition, observing, “In such matters, the scope of judicial review is very limited. Judicial review of administrative action is intended to prevent arbitrariness, irrationality, unreasonableness, bias and mala fides. Its purpose is to check whether choice or decision is made ‘lawfully’ and not to check whether choice or decision is ‘sound’. We find no arbitrariness, irrationality, unreasonableness, bias and mala fide in the action of the respondents…”
Sukhdev Patwari and Bachan Singh said, “We approached the apex court after the dismissal of our writ petition and now the SC has issued notice to the Punjab government. The delimitation of wards was not done as per rules, as many wards have been divided and merged arbitrarily.”
The report on the delimitation of wards was submitted to the Punjab government on October 29, after which the government had notified the civic elections to be held in 50 wards, out of which 25 have been reserved for women candidates.
The Akali and BJP councilors have criticised the delimitation report of the Mohali Municipal Corporation, alleging that it has been done to oust them of the civic elections.
Former BJP councillor Rajinder Sharma alleged that the delimitation has not been done as per rules, and its only purpose is to give benefit to Congress councillors.
Opposing the report finalised by a Congress-led panel, the SAD and BJP councillors have alleged that 70% of the wards held by them have gone into delimitation, while only 10% of the Congress councillors’ wards have been delimited. Now, either the sitting SAD and BJP councillors would have to forgo their candidature or they would have to shift their placements as councillors, they said.