The Allahabad High Court has stayed the notification of delimitation of wards issued on November 5, 2022, regarding elections to the Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation.
The Division Bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta and Justice Jayant Banerji passed this order while hearing a petition filed by Darshan Singh.
In this petition, the draft order issued under Section 11-B (2) of the U.P Municipalities Act, 1916 dated 5.11.2022 is under challenge on the ground that only two days’ time was provided for filing objections, whereas under law, the said period should not be less than seven days.
It is submitted that 6.11.2022 was a Sunday and the petitioner and a large number of other persons have been deprived of their valuable right to file an objection.
The Standing Counsel is not in a position to dispute the proposition of law canvassed by the counsel for the petitioner.
However, it is urged that before the issuance of impugned notification, another notification was issued under Section 11-B on 14.09.2022.
Later on, it transpired that there was some mistake in the same and, therefore, the impugned notification has been issued. It is pointed out that in the earlier notification, seven days time was granted and thus it is sought to be contended that in the impugned notification only two days’ time has been granted.
In other words, the submission of the standing counsel is that the time given for filing objection by the previous notification and the impugned notification has to be clubbed.
The Court observed,
The contention does not have any force. By earlier draft notification, the respondents proposed to carve out 60 wards. By the impugned notification, the respondents have come up with an entirely new scheme relating to delimitation, proposing 55 wards only.
Therefore, in our opinion, it was mandatory to have seven days time for filing objections and suggestions as stipulated under Section 11-B (2) of the Act. As the said requirement has not been fulfilled while issuing the impugned notification, therefore, any exercise that would be held in pursuance of the impugned notification would ex facie be contrary to the mandate of law.
Accordingly, the Court stayed the notification dated 5.11.2022 and restrained the respondents from taking any further action in pursuance thereof. However, this will not preclude the respondents from issuing a fresh notification.
The Court has fixed the next hearing of the petition on January 4, 2023.