Guj civic polls: HC scraps plea seeking one date for vote counting

The Gujarat High Court onFriday dismissed a petition challenging the State ElectionCommission's decision to conduct counting of votes for thelocal bodies' election on different dates.

While the Gujarat BJP has welcomed the decision, theCongress said it is mulling whether to approach the SupremeCourt.

As per the election schedule declared by the SEC inJanuary, polls to six municipal corporations will be held onFebruary 21 and counting of votes will be taken up on February23.

The elections of municipalities and panchayats willtake place on February 28, and counting of votes will be doneon March 2.

A division bench comprising Justice J B Pardiwala andJustice Ilesh Vora rejected the petition, which had sought theHigh Court's direction to quash the SEC's January 23 circularfixing February 23 and March 2 as the dates for counting ofvotes.

The petition was filed jointly by Natwar Mahida,Govind Parmar and Jagdish Makwana on February 2.

The main contention was that the declaration ofresults on February 23 for six municipal corporations wouldinfluence voters of municipalities as well as district andtaluka panchayat bodies polls, which will go to polls onFebruary 28.

The petitioners demanded that the date of countingshould be the same for a ''free and fair election''.

The SEC, however, argued that different dates had beenallotted keeping in mind the coronavirus outbreak.

Different dates would help the authorities in limitingthe number of people who gather at counting centres, andthereby contain the spread of the virus, the SEC said.

Unhappy with the verdict, state Congress presidentAmit Chavda said his legal team will study the court orderbefore taking a decision to approach the Supreme Court.