LAD initiates process to appoint State Election Commissioner for holding local body polls in Puducherry

The Local Administration Department has set in motion the process of appointing the State Election Commissioner (SEC) for holding the long-delayed local body elections in Puducherry.

Subsequent to the floating of an advertisement inviting applications from eligible candidates, the LAD has so far received applications from six persons for the SEC post. The last date fixed by the department to apply for the post is October 17, an LAD official told The Hindu.

After receiving all the applications, a Selection Committee headed by Chief Secretary and comprising a representative from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Panchayati Raj would choose among the applicants the most qualified person for the post, he said.

The local body elections were last held in the Union Territory of Puducherry in 2006 and the polls have been due since 2011. The process of appointing the SEC through a selection process after calling for applications from eligible candidates was started in 2019 following a direction from the MHA after the then Lieutenant Governor, Kiran Bedi, objected to the appointment of a former bureaucrat as the SEC by the Congress government of that time.

After differences erupted between the two over the appointment of the SEC, the MHA then issued a direction to the territorial administration to “select the SEC through a transparent, competitive and fair process where the applications are invited through an all India advertisement and is made through a Selection Committee headed by Chief Secretary, for the timely completion of the election process.”

As per the advertisement placed by the LAD last month, the age limit for the applicant has been fixed at 65 years and his or her appointment would be for a period of three years or till the attainment of the age of 68, whichever is earlier.

“The SEC will be appointed from among the persons, who served under the Union Government or under the Government of a State or Union Territory for not less than 25 years, having the knowledge and experience in conducting elections. Along with personal details, the applicant has to provide a brief note indicating experience in election administration, electoral management, public administration or related fields,” the advertisement said. 

The tenure of the last SEC, Roy P. Thomas, had ended almost three years ago. During his tenure, the local body elections were announced in 2021, however the polls could not be held as per schedule because the election process was challenged for lack of reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in elections to Municipalities and Commune Panchayats in the Union Territory.

Following a direction from the Madras High Court, the AINRC-BJP government appointed a one-man commission in 2021 with Justice Sasidharan, a former Judge of the Madras High Court, as Chairperson to offer recommendations on OBC reservation for local body polls in the Union Territory. The Commission, after utilising the services of around 1,500 Anganwadi workers for a door-to-door survey, submitted its report to the government in March this year. 

The report contained details of ward-wise voters as notified by the State Election Commission, the OBC population as per survey, voters’ details as per gender, non-OBC voters as per the survey, ward-wise, religion-wise and community-wise details of the voters and the formula adopted for calculating the allocation of seats.

“Along with the process of appointing the SEC, we have started studying the report submitted by Justice Sasidharan Commission. We will have to place a proposal before the Cabinet for notifying the reservation framework for Municipalities and Commune Panchayats. We are speeding up the entire process,” a senior official told The Hindu.