Chandigarh’s present population not taken into account, HC told

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 17

The Punjab and Haryana High Court was today told that the present population of Chandigarh was not considered while determining the wards for the reserved category in the forthcoming Municipal Corporation elections.

The plea, heard by a Division Bench today, will come up for further hearing on Thursday. The UT Administration has been asked to file an affidavit and report of a tehsildar in the matter.

The submission was made by Prem Pal, a resident of Dhanas Housing Complex, in an application filed through senior counsel Gaurav Chopra with advocate Anurag Chopra. He was seeking directions for being impleaded as a party to the ongoing proceedings initiated by Shiv Kumar against the Chief Electoral Officer and other respondents.

Appearing before the Bench of Justice Ritu Bahri and Justice Karamjit Singh, Gaurav and Anurag Chopra submitted that the applicant was aggrieved by a notification whereby his place of rehabilitation was excluded from being a reserved ward for the Schedule Caste category. He added that the population as of today was not considered while “determining the selection of ward towards the reserved category”.

The Bench was also told that the minutes of meeting dated December 4, 2020, on the delimitation of wards duly laid emphasis on the fact that the latest population data based in the electoral roll would be taken into account for reference for the areas where population dynamics had considerably changed due to the shifting of colonies, which was not reflected in the census data.

It was added that the petition before the Bench had been preferred seeking issuance of directions for setting aside the order dated October 19 issued by the UT State Election Commissioner on reservation of wards for Schedule Caste and women candidates for the election of councillors. Directions were also sought to reconsider the reservation of wards after excluding the population of the colonies not existing presently or which had been demolished.