Chandigarh: Punjab leader of opposition Partap Singh Bajwa on Tuesday welcomed the Supreme Court’s stance against glaring irregularities in the recently concluded panchayat elections in Punjab. He said that the AAP-led govt’s manipulation of the election process has drawn severe criticism from the court, which highlighted the troubling fact that 3,000 out of 13,000 gram panchayat posts were filled unopposed. “The Chief Justice of India, Sanjiv Khanna, termed this number substantial, raising serious concerns about the integrity of the elections,” he said.
The Supreme Court, while hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Punjab and Haryana high court’s dismissal of over 800 cases of arbitrary rejection of nomination papers, expressed grave displeasure over the procedural lapses. The preponing of hearings without adequate notice to the petitioners was described by the Chief Justice as “very strange.” He remarked, “This is something unimaginable. I have never seen such figures!” TNN