Immediately after the Supreme Court refused relief to the state government on the panchayat polls issue, our Chief Minister Pramod Sawant announced that elections to the 186 local bodies would be held on August 10. The state had moved the Apex Court against the HC order dismissing the sarkar's petition for postponement of elections. In a strongly worded judgement the SC said that it finds no reason to interfere in the process of elections and that the lower court's order is precisely in conformity with Article 243-E of the Constitution. The High Court too delivered a stinging rebuke to the sarkar earlier mentioning that it faltered in complying with the Constitutional prerequisite for OBC reservations and cannot use this lapse to breach the Constitutional mandate and put off elections. The courts have seen through the sarkar's nefarious design to foist its own representatives on the panchayats, the best form of local self governance; thereafter to undermine, subvert and then ultimately subsume the whole system. We hope the SC's ruling serves as a wakeup call for the state and it won't dare indulge in such authoritarian, anti- people measures in future.
