Kerala HC refuses to defer voter roll revision in state
The Kerala High Court on Friday refused to defer the revision of voter rolls in the state and asked the Left Democratic Front government to approach the Supreme Court, Bar and Bench reported.
A single-judge bench of Justice VG Arun was hearing a petition by the state government seeking to defer the process until December 21 to allow panchayat elections to be completed, Live Law reported.
Local body polls in the state are due to be held in two phases on December 9 and December 11, with votes scheduled to be counted on December 13. The last date for completion of the election is December 18.
According to the state’s petition, the elections would require about 1.7 lakh government personnel apart from 68,000 security staff. The voter roll revision exercise would demand an additional 25,668 personnel, Bar and Bench quoted the petition as saying.
“The pool of trained and election-experienced staff is finite, which constrains real-world deployment,” stated the plea. “Parting with such number of officers for simultaneous SIR and LSGI [local self-government institution] elections is a near impossibility, apart from possibly putting the state to an administrative impasse.”
This came days after the Election Commission began the enumeration phase of the exercise in 12 states and Union Territories, including Kerala, on November 4.
The exercise had been announced by Chief Election Commissioner...
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