Nagaland: Supreme Court stays order cancelling ULB polls in state

The Supreme Court (SC) on April 5 stayed the order cancelling the general elections to the Urban Local Body (ULB) with 33 per cent women reservation.

As per a report by Live Law India, the development comes after a contempt petition was filed in the apex court against the state government.

The report claimed that senior advocate Colin Gonsalves informed the top court that the ULB elections in Nagaland were cancelled by the Election Commission with the consent of the Chief Minister.

Later, the counsel for the state informed SC of moving an application.

''So you including the Election Commission is in breach of the court's order. We had said it would not be postponed,'' the report quoted Justice Kaul as saying.

The bench also opined that the order of the court dated 14/3/2023 was ''quite clear'' that any endeavour to ''tinker'' with the ULB election would be in breach of the order of this court.

Justice Kaul said that the move by the state government is not acceptable.

It is worth mentioning that the 14th Nagaland Legislative Assembly repealed the Nagaland Municipal  Act 2011 in the recently concluded budget session.

The House had noted that because the public believed the Act violated the spirit of Article 371-A, its implementation had always been "fraught with significant controversy." 

The was of the view that the NMA 2001 must be repealed before the ULB elections could be held.

Following this, the state election commissioner cancelled off the May 16 ULB polls.

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