The court's intervention is warranted to ensure the completion of election proceedings when the adjournment decision is unwarranted.

1. Ext. P1 notices was issued convening a meeting of the fourth respondent panchayat, at 11 a.m. on 19.5.2009, to hold the election to the casual vacancies of President and Vice-President. The petitioner and the second respondent were the candidates to the post of President. All the twenty-one existing members of the panchayat attended the meeting. The Returning Officer issued ballot papers to all of them. Though the ballot papers were received by all the members, the Returning Officer received only 20 ballot papers after voting. These are the undisputed facts.

2. Petitioner contends that the third respondent refused to return the ballot paper and when that was detected, on advice from his superior authorities, the Returning Officer decided to give one more ballot paper to the third respondent and she, for reasons best known to her, refused to accept such ballot paper and boycotted the meeting. He alleges that some of the members wanted the Returning Officer to count the available ballot papers and declare the results, however that the Returning Officer contacted the State Election Commission and as a consequence, issued the impugned Ext.P4 adjourning the election to another date to be specified thereafter. The petitioner challenges that decision and seeks a direction to the Returning Officer to declare the result by counting the votes already cast by the members in the election held on 19.5.2009 based on Ext.P1 notification.

3. The first respondent Returning Officer has filed a counter-affidavit, the pertinently relevant portion of which is extracted hereunder as follows:

"3. After receipt of nominations I read out the names of candidates nominated for election. The writ petitioner and the 2nd respondent were the only candidates nominated for election to the office of President. After the nominations were found valid I supplied to each member the ballot paper in Form No.1 of the Rules for the election of President. All the 21 members who were present at the meeting accepted the ballot papers. The voting pattern as per the Rules was explained to the members. After the members cast their votes I went to each member to collect the ballot papers. While I was thus collecting the ballot papers certain members also started collecting ballot papers from other members as if to speed up the process. On verifying the ballot papers that were returned by the members it was found that only 20 ballot papers were returned. One ballot paper was found missing. On verification it was found that the ballot paper issued to the 3rd respondent was not returned. When the 3rd respondent was asked about the ballot paper issued to her she informed that the ballot paper has been collected by some member. At this moment certain members demanded that the 20 ballot papers which has been returned to the Returning Officer should be counted and the results declared. The other section of the members opposed the same and demanded that the ballot papers need be counted only after tracing out the missing ballot paper. This was followed by heated exchange of words and there was attempt to snatch the ballot papers from me.

4. In the circumstances, I contacted the State Election Commission over telephone and the State Election Commission informed me to issue the 3rd respondent another ballot paper on her giving written request in that regard. However, the 3rd respondent refused to make any such request and walked out of the hall along with other members stating that she had already cast her vote."

4. The second respondent, the candidate rival to the petitioner, has pleaded that the subject matter of this writ petition relates to an election to the office of the President of the panchayat and therefore, is a dispute under Section 153(14) [erroneously pleaded as Section 154] of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act, 1994, hereinafter referred to as "the Act". It is pleaded that being an election to a village panchayat, such dispute has to be raised before the Munsiff