Bombay HC stays bypolls to four BMC seats till June 12

MUMBAI: Bombay high court stayed by-election on four BMC corporator seats till June 12 after the runners-up for those seats approached the court. The candidates have contended instead of conducting by-polls, they should be declared winners for those seats.
Meanwhile, the BMC wrote to the state government requesting the disqualified corporators be barred from contesting the election for six years.The BMC letter states, "The state government shall by notification in the official gazette disqualify such persons from being elected or being a councillor for a period of six years from the date of such order."
In the BMC poll of February 2017, four corporators, Kesharben Patel and Murji Patel of BJP and Steffie Kini and Rajpat Yadav of Congress got elected. They had contested on seats meant for reserved category candidates. Nitin Salagre (Congress), Sandip Naik (Shiv Sena), Geeta Bhandari (Shiv Sena) and Eknath Hundare (Shiv Sena) were second runners-up for these seats.
Candidates contesting reserved category seats need to submit their caste certificates along with their nomination forms. Within six months of their election, such candidates need to validate their caste certificate with the state government's district caste validity scrutiny committee and submit it to the BMC. The state government increased the period to one year recently.
The four corporators, however, failed to submit their validated caste certificate to the BMC, which led to their disqualification.
The second runners-up say they should be declared the corporators as they have bagged the second highest number of votes.
The high court will hear the matter on June 10.