The Madras High Court has ordered that local body elections in Tamil Nadu should be completed by November 17.

The first bench comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar ordered the State Election Commission (SEC) to issue notification for the election by September 18.

The polls, which were to have been held last October, were cancelled by Justice N Kirubakaran on a petition filed by DMK for non-compliance of Rule 24 of Tamil Nadu Panchayat (Election) Rules of 1995 that contemplates issuance of advance notifications.

The first bench today delivered the judgment based on an appeal by SEC against the order of the single judge directing it to hold local body polls before December 31, 2016 and connected petitions. This is, however, subject to the Supreme Court order of special leave petitions pending likely to be passed on September 6, the bench said.

P Wilson, senior counsel appeared for DMK, which was the petitioner in the original writ petition, said relevant pages of candidates’ affidavits especially those pages containing criminal antecedents need to be uploaded on internet.. Technical details of uploading was left to SEC.

Candidates entire affidavit has to be made available to public in local offices and copy should be furnished to any person requesting it on payment of charges. Notification under Rule 24 of Panchayat Rules has to be first issued and then notifications under Rule 25 have to be issued, he said.

SEC’s senior counsel B Kumar said that it was not possible to implement certain directions of the single judge. For instance, scanning and uploading on its website candidates’ affidavits will be a huge task as nearly five lakh candidates will be contesting with each affidavit running into 6-10 pages, he said.

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