Sonepat MC may miss another poll deadline

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 2

Nearly four years after its formation, the Sonepat Municipal Corporation is set to miss another deadline for holding elections.

With the State Election Commission (SEC) recently issuing a notification on re-scheduling the date of final publication of electoral rolls of the Sonepat MC to July 12, the elections seem to be a remote possibility in near future. Earlier, April 5 was the deadline for the publication of electoral rolls. It was later postponed to June 20.

The elections to five Municipal Corporations were held recently, the Sonepat MC poll was held up as some villages wanted to be excluded from the jurisdiction of the newly created civic body.

Unable to conduct elections, the BJP government amended Section 4(4) of the Haryana Municipal Corporation Act, 1994, postponing the deadline for holding elections to four years. This meant that the elections should have been held in July, which seems improbable with the SEC rescheduling the publication of final electoral rolls to July 12.

As the monsoon session of the Haryana Assembly will be convened in August or September, the state government would have to bring in an ordinance to amend the Act to seek more time for conducting the elections.

Hemant Kumar, an advocate in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, has termed the decision to extend the deadline for holding elections as “undemocratic”.

The MC Act will be amended for the seventh time in more than a decade. The then Bhupinder Singh Hooda government had amended the provision five times, while the BJP government has done it once.

Urban Local Bodies Minister Kavita Jain represents Sonepat in the Assembly.

BJP ready for elections 

The BJP is ready for the Sonepat MC elections whenever it is announced. The party's performance in the elections to five MCs and in the Sonepat parliamentary constituency, from where former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda lost by a big margin, indicates the BJP will win hands down in the MC poll. — Rajiv Jain, media adviser to CM