EC goes for legal battle to lift stay

The Election Commission decides to fight a legal battle for lifting the High Court order of three-month stay on elections to the twin Dhaka city corporations, as the long-overdue polls have been stalled once again even after the nomination filing for the crucial race.

While the nomination process was on, a case was filed against the Dhaka North City Corporation and Dhaka South City Corporation elections, challenging procedure for demarcation of wards of the two new city corporations.

The EC held a meeting on Wednesday afternoon to review the certified copy of the High Court?s order and the rule nisi served on eight respondents, including the chief election commissioner and the LGRD secretary.

Chaired by CEC Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad, the meeting decided to sit with local government ministry, one of the respondents, next week to discuss the modus operandi to jointly fight the case, EC sources said.

The EC also reaffirmed Thursday its move to put up the legal fight in order to hold the postponed polls at the earliest.

In its April 16 order, the HC stayed the elections for three months upon a writ petition filed by Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh.

The court also asked the commission to update the electoral roll of the DCC areas before voting.

A rule nisi was also issued as to why a directive should not be given to the respondents to hold the polls in compliance with the provisions in sections 3(2), 5(1) (Kha), 27, 28, 29 and 30 of the Local Government (City Corporation) Act 2009.

The EC will respond to the show-cause rules of the HC first. Then it is likely to appeal to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court for vacating the HC stay order.

Advocate Manzill Murshid, on the rights body?s behalf, filed the writ seeking stay order on the DCC polls as proper procedure was not followed regarding ward demarcation of the two new bodies in line with sections 27 and 28 of the Act.

The EC received the certified copy of the court order on April 30.

As per the Act, the government has to appoint an official and other assistant officials to demarcate the wards.

The official will issue a notice for receiving objections and recommendations over demarcation, and publishing a preliminary list of wards.

Subsequently, the government has to publish a list of the wards through a gazette notification after disposing of the objections.

But the ministry concerned did not maintain proper procedure regarding the two city corporations created through bifurcation of DCC on November 1 to protests from different quarters, including the opposition politicians.

On April 9, Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad announced schedules for elections and fixed May 24 for ballot.

Source: daily-sun.com

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