UP panchayat polls: Another petition challenges poll schedule

Another petition has been filed in the Allahabad High Court seeking conduct of village panchayat polls simultaneously with district and block panchayat polls.
The devision bench comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and Rakesh Srivastava sought response of the Uttar Pradesh government and the state election commission (SEC) on the petition.
The Lucknow bench of the court directed to connect this new petition, seeking directions to conduct village panchayats poll simultaneously, with another petition filed on September 10 on the same issue.
The earlier petition had challenged the decision of the UP government to conduct the district and block panchayat members election first and the village pradhans poll later on.

The state government is conducting district and block panchayats members polls on separate dates.
The UP had sought dismissal of the petition on the last hearing.

UP's Advocate General (AG) Vijay Bahadur Singh told the court that panchayat poll process has been started and notification for election of districts and block panchayats has been issued "as per the Constitutional provisions".
"Hence no cause of action survived to this writ petition and it was liable to be dismissed," Singh said.
The AG also said that the UP government was acting in accordance to the Article 243 of the Constitution, dealing with panchayat election.

Counsel for State Election Commission (SEC) also appeared before the court and sought time for filing counter affidavit regarding issues raised in the petition.
A division bench of justices Rakesh Tiwari and Attau Rahman Masoodi had fixed September 29 as the next date of hearing, giving time to UP government and SEC to file detailed counter affidavits.