C.T. Ravikumar, J.

1. The petitioners in the captioned writ petitions are the respondents in the original petitions filed by the common first respondent herein, before the Kerala State Election Commission (for short 'the Commission'). They filed interlocutory applications under Order VI Rule 17 of the Civil Procedure Code (for short the 'Code') in the respective original petitions for amending the objections filed by them. It is the dismissal of those applications that constrained the petitioners to come up with the captioned writ petitions assailing the respective orders passed against them. For the sake of convenience, the number of the writ petitions, the number of the original petitions from which each of these writ petitions arose and the number of the interlocutory applications dismissed by the Commission are tabulated as hereunder:-

2. In all these cases, copy of the original petitions filed by the common first respondent before the Commission, copy of the objection filed by the respective petitioners in the respective original petition, copy of the amendment applications, copy of the objection filed by the common first respondent to the amendment application and the copy of the impugned order passed by the Commission are produced respectively as Exts.P1 to P5. In view of the generality of the issues germinated under exactly similar set of facts and also of the commonness of the point posed for consideration, individual consideration of these writ petitions is uncalled for. Therefore, on consent of parties, they were heard jointly and are being disposed of by this common judgment.

3. The writ petitioners and the common first respondent are members of Pananchery Grama Panchayat (for short the 'Panchayat') in Thrissur District. They contested the election to the Panchayat in October, 2010 under the banner of the political party Indian National Congress (for short 'INC'). The Panchayat consists of 23 wards. In the election, candidates including the writ petitioners belonging to INC returned from 13 wards and the candidates contested the election under the Left Democratic Front (for short 'LDF') were elected from 9 wards and from the remaining one ward, a candidate from the political party Kerala Congress (M) got elected. The common first respondent was elected as the President of the Panchayat. Later, a motion of no confidence was brought against the common first respondent by the petitioner in W.P.(C).No.3897 of 2014 viz., the respondent in O.P.No.21 of 2012. The allegation raised by the common first respondent against the writ petitioners in the respective original petitions before the Commission is that defying the whip issued by the President of the District Congress Committee, Thrissur to abstain from 'no confidence motion' held on 8.3.2012, they participated in the 'no confidence motion' and voted in favour of the 'no confidence motion' and consequently he was unseated from the presidentship. The original petitions referred above were filed before the Commission, in the circumstances, seeking disqualification of the writ petitioners on the ground of defection under section 4 of the Kerala Local Authorities (Prohibition of Defection) Act, 1999 (for short the 'Act'). The petitioners filed objections in the respective original petitions filed against them denying allegation of defiance of the direction-in-writing/whip. After completion of the pleadings issues were framed and the joint trial of all these cases was conducted. Witnesses from both sides have been examined and it is t