It is time for comprehensive reforms to municipal elections
- The Supreme Court judgment on the Chandigarh mayoral election gives us a good occasion to think more broadly about elections to municipalities.
Key Highlights
- Elections to the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies are impressive democratic exercises in terms of timeliness of elections the manner in which they are convened
- And the clockwork nature in which power is transferred from one government to another.
- The first issue with respect to municipal elections is that they are not being held on time.
- This is in violation of the Constitution.
- As per Janaagraha’s Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems 2023 study, over 1,400 municipalities did not have elected councils in place, as of September 2021
- The CAG’s audit reports of 17 States on the implementation of the 74th Constitution Amendment Act (74th CAA) observes that over 1,500 municipalities did not have elected councils in place during the audit period of 2015-2021 across States
- Among larger cities, the Greater Chennai Corporation had elections in 2022 after a gap of nearly six years
- the Municipal Corporation of Delhi had elections after a delay of seven months
- Second, where elections to urban local governments were held, in certain cases, councils were not constituted, and elections of mayors, deputy mayors and standing committees were delayed.
Suresh Mahajan v. State of Madhya Pradesh
- The first challenge of holding timely elections requires determined enforcement with the Supreme Court’s intervention.
- Article 243U of the 74th CAA stipulates that the duration of urban local governments is five years and that an election to constitute an urban local government should be completed “before the expiry of its duration.
- Further, in case of dissolution of the elected council by the State, the election should be held before the expiration of a period of six months from the date of its dissolution.
- Despite the Supreme Court stating in Suresh Mahajan v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2022) that this constitutional mandate is inviolable.
- State governments do not hold timely elections to urban local governments.
- It appears to be an area that deserves greater policy attention in at least the following aspects:
- Discretion of government officials in scheduling elections on time.
- Possibility of the State government exercising undue influence on officials to delay elections
- Discretion of officials in identifying the presiding officer.
- Possibility of conflict of interest as the presiding officer may not be independent; and the manual ballot paper-based process.
- In India, 17% of cities including five of the eight largest ones have mayoral terms less than five years.
- We need a standardisation of mayoral terms of five years.
- To deal with these challenges, State Election Commissions (SECs) need to play a far more significant role.
- Articles 243K and 243ZA of the Constitution state that the superintendence, direction, and control of the preparation of the electoral rolls for, and the conduct of, all elections to panchayats and urban local governments shall be vested in SECs.
- The Court has emphasised that in the domain of elections to panchayats and urban local governments under Part IX and Part IXA of the Constitution.
- SECs enjoy the same status as the Election Commission of India.
Conclusion
- Perhaps it is time to also evaluate a potential role for the SECs in the elections of mayors, deputy mayors and standing committees, given what happened in Chandigarh.