The Court emphasized that the powers under Article 226 of the Constitution of India would not be exercised when there is a remedy in filing an election petition, and that all election disputes arising in the middle of the elections shall be postponed for their resolution until after the elections are over.

JUDGMENT :

All the present Special Civil Applications are taken up for hearing together since they all involve common question with respect to deletion of the name of the petitioner societies in the final voters’ list of the Agriculture Produce Market Committee, [“APMC” for short], Zalod.

2. Rule returnable forthwith. Ms. Nidhi Vyas, learned AGP waives service of notice of rule for the respondent State authorities and Mr. Dipen Desai, learned advocate waives service of notice of rule for the private respondents. With consent of learned advocates appearing for the parties, the matters are taken up for hearing and decision today.

3. The brief facts leading to the filing of this writ petitions are as follows:-

3.1 The petitioner societies are the Marketing Cooperative Societies which are duly registered with the competent authority and they hold licence of marketing since long. The licence of the petitioner societies has been renewed from time to time. It is alleged that the licence of the petitioner societies has been renewed from 1.4.2022 to 31.3.2023 and the same has been signed by the Secretary of the APMC, however, the Administrator has deliberately not signed the said renewal with the ulterior motive to exclude the name of the petitioner societies from the voters’ list from the election to be held to the Managing Committee of the APMC.

3.2 It is further submitted that the respondent No.2 – Director of Agricultural Marketing & Rural Finance appointed the respondent No.3 as an Election Authority and the respondent No.4 as the Authorized Officer to prepare the list of voters. That the election programme came to be published by the respondent No.2 vide his communication dated 27.5.2022 and the election programme was declared on 4.6.2022. The respondent No.4 was informed to take appropriate action for the preparation of the list of voters. The petitioner societies who are dispensing agricultural credits in the area of market proper and Zalod APMC forwarded their names to the Authorized Officer so as to enable him to prepare the list of voters. Accordingly, the required information was also submitted before 12.6.2022. That the publication of the preliminary list of voters was fixed on 17.6.2022. The objections were to be invited on or before 1.7.2022. The decision on the objections and publication of preliminary voters’ list was fixed on 6.7.2022. Thereafter, the objections against the 2nd publication of the preliminary list of voters was fixed on 13.7.2022 and on 16.7.2022 the final list of voters was to be published. Thereafter, the nominations were to be filed on 17.8.2022. The date of publication of the list of nominated candidate was to be displayed on 7.8.2022 and the scrutiny of the nomination so received was fixed on 18.8.2022. The withdrawal of the nomination was fixed on 21.8.2022. The publication of the final list of contesting candidates was fixed on 21.8.2022 and the voting was slated to take place on 1.9.2022. The counting of the votes was fixed on 2.9.2022.

3.3 It is further the case of the petitioner societies that as per the information sought for by the respondent No.4, the petitioner societies forwarded the names of the members of the Executive Committee of their societies. Along with the said communication, the petitioner societies also placed on record the resolution for the constitution of its Executive Committees. The petitioner societies also placed on record the trial balance of the financial years 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22. It is their case that all the required information was duly provided to the respondent No.4. It is further the case of the petitioner societies that they were included in the provisional list of voters. That after the name of the petitioner societies was reflected in the provisional list of voters, however, objections came to be raised against such inclusion. Pursuant to the receipt of such objections, the respondent No.4 issued notices to the petitioner societies wherein it was alleged