High Court Dismisses Plea Alleging Wards Divided Unevenly In Punjab, Says Right To Vote Not Affected If House Shifted From One Ward To Another

The Punjab & Haryana High Court has dismissed a plea challenging the Punjab Panchayat Elections proceedings which had taken place on October 15, on the ground that the wards have been divided unevenly on the basis of political considerations.

A division bench of Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Justice Sudeepti Sharma observed,

"...members of the dwelling unit, may irrespective of house numbers becoming allotted to any homestead, rather becomes enlisted as voters in one or the other ward concerned. Since therebys there is no snatching of the right of exercising of franchise by any of the members in a dwelling unit. Resultantly, even if one or the other members of any dwelling unit are enlisted as voter(s) in one or the other wards concerned, thereby the said enlistment does not suffer from any gross illegality or impropriety."

The Court was hearing a batch of two writ petitions regarding wardbandi of Punjab's Gram Panchayat namely Terkiana, Block Dasuya, District Hoshiarpur. The plea sought correction of electoral roll issued in 2023 as per the provisions of the Punjab State Election Commission Act, 1994 , as well as the Punjab Panchayat Election Rules, 1994.

It was contended that the wards are divided discriminately and the voter lists were not made available to the public and only on repeated demands under the pressure of media, the authorities made the voter list of Gram Panchayat Terkiana public.

The petitioner argued that there are many illegalities in the Electoral Rolls as well as in the notification of wardbandi and resultantly the holdings of elections to Gram Panchayat Terkiana on the basis of "defective Electoral Roll" is illegal and violative of statutory provisions.

After hearing the submissions, the bench noted that the de-limitation exercise can only be taken place when there is growth of population in a certain ward, by the the concerned Census Department.

The bench did not find any irregularity in the list and said that, "the members of the dwelling unit, may irrespective of house numbers becoming allotted to any homestead, rather becomes enlisted as voters in one or the other ward concerned. Since therebys there is no snatching of the right of exercising of franchise by any of the members in a dwelling unit."

In the light of the above, the plea was dismissed.

Mr. Sukhcharan Singh Gill, Advocate for the petitioners (in CWP-26082-2024).

Mr. Impinder Singh Dhaliwal, Advocate for the petitioners (in CWP-25931-2024)

Mr. Maninder Singh, Sr. DAG, Punjab.