Local body polls: SC stays HC division bench order on Kerala EC plea

The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Kerala High Court order to conduct the local body elections using the electoral roll prepared for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on an appeal filed by Kerala State Election Commission.

Reacting to this, V Bhaskaran, Kerala State Election Commissioner, told ANI, "There are many practical difficulties if we take 2019 voters list. So we had presented these difficulties before the Supreme Court. The court accepted it and the order of division bench is stayed now."

Election Commission appealed for conducting the civic body polls based on the voters' list prepared for the 2015 local body elections, which had invited stiff opposition from the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). The Left Democratic Front (LDF), the ruling coalition is supporting the election commission decision.

Earlier, UDF had approached Division bench of the Kerala High Court, which quashed the Election Commission's order against which state election commission moved the apex court.

One of the main contentions of UDF was regarding the new voters but the election commission said that all applicants will be added in the list.

"We expect about 10 lakh new voters and we have already received applications of about 15.59 lakh people. So we will start to process it and we will finalize the list," said State Election Commissioner.