Mumbai: The vacation bench of the Bombay High Court on Tuesday refused to grant any interim relief to Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) which challenged Returning Officer’s (RO) order requisitioning its staff from Mumbai, Mumbai suburb, Thane and Pune for the election duty.
A bench of Justices Sandeep Marne and Manjusha Deshpande said that there is no violation by the RO in requisitioning LIC’s staff for election duty. Also, similar requisition was made during the Lok Sabha elections early this year.
During the hearing, the court remarked: “If every organisation comes like this, then how will elections take place?”
LIC had approached the HC challenging the RO’s orders contending that a large number of its staff has been requisitioned for elections duty which will hamper its business. It claimed that from some of its offices, nearly 70-80% of its staff had been requisitioned for election duty. It claimed that this was in violation of the ratio laid down by the HC in its 2009 order.
State’s advocates Jyoti Chavan and Bhupesh Samant submitted a communication issued by the Chief Electoral Officer granting powers to RO to direct government authorities to make its staff available for election duty. The bench noted that it would be too much to expect that the chief electoral officer would requisition staff for every constituency.
Prima facie there is no violation of the 2009 order of the high court, the bench said. “Though petitioner has tried to highlight data of its employees in Thane, Pune, Mumbai and Mumbai suburb, when larger picture is taken in consideration it cannot be held at this stage that large number if employees of LIC are selectively deputed for election duty,” the bench said.
It added that as per the data provided, 688 LIC employees have been deputed for election duty in Pune and Thane. “When this number is compared with 60,768 employees only in Pune district , number of LIC appears to be minuscule,” the bench emphasised.
“Considering this we are not inclined to pass any interim order,” it added. The court also took into account that necessary training has already been imparted by the ECI to the LIC’s staff. Also, they are required for two days of raining and two days during the polls.
Those officers selected as zonal officers may be required for slightly longer duration, however, of the 53 zonal officers, only one is from LIC, the court noted.
LIC also alleged that its employees are selectively taken by not requisitioning staff of other Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) like banks, etc. The HC said this issue can be decided by the regular court.
