India Morning News
Nagpur: Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court has ordered State Election Commission (SEC) to declare results of all Maharashtra Nagar Parishad and Nagar Panchayat elections together on 21 December.
Because of this order, the results that were supposed to come out on 3 December were stopped at the last moment.
Earlier, the SEC had postponed voting in 24 out of 284 places, and these 24 areas were going to vote on 20 December. This sudden change made many BJP leaders unhappy.
CM Devendra Fadnavis, Deputy CM Eknath Shinde, and Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule said the SEC should have planned better. Fadnavis said that in his 25–30 years of seeing elections, he has never seen already-announced elections being postponed like this. He also said the Commission’s lawyers misread the law, which caused confusion.
But the Election Commission has now replied strongly. Senior officials said, “We follow the law, not political opinions. All our decisions are legal, and we will continue to work as per the rules.”
Fadnavis also said that many candidates work very hard during their campaigns and delays like this disappoint them. He added that the SEC must improve its system so that such problems do not happen in future elections.
