Legal validity of Ambala mayor by-election questioned, election commission silent, says city bases advocate

AMBALA: On Sunday, March 2, as Haryana conducts municipal elections for over three dozen urban local bodies, more than 1,93,000 registered voters of Ambala City Municipal Corporation (MC) will cast their votes to elect a new mayor.
The post has remained vacant for the past four-and-a-half months. The vote counting will take place ten days later, on March 12.
However, amidst the election process, a significant legal issue remains unresolved. Ambala City based Advocate Hemant Kumar, a resident of Sector 7, Urban Estate, and a registered city voter, has raised concerns regarding the legality of the mayor’s by-election.
He emphasized that unless this legal issue is addressed immediately, serious questions will continue to surround the election’s validity.
Hemant further pointed out that even after the by-election is conducted and a new female mayor is elected for the remaining ten months of the current municipal term—until January 13, 2026—the election’s legality could still be challenged.
Any resident of Ambala or even an outsider can file a writ petition in the High Court to contest the validity of this by-election, he said.
The crux of the legal issue lies in an amendment made to Section 13 of the Haryana MC Act, 1994, by the state assembly in November 2020.
The amendment mistakenly stated that the provisions for filling vacant seats through by-elections would not apply to the mayor’s position.
This effectively means that if a mayoral post becomes vacant—regardless of the reason—it cannot be filled through a by-election conducted by the state Election Commission, said Hemant.
Hemant clarified that the amendment should have specifically mentioned that the provision for by-elections does not apply to mayoral posts vacated due to a no-confidence motion.
This is similar to the legal provision in Section 15 of the Haryana Municipal Act, 1973, which states that a directly elected president of a municipal council or municipality cannot be replaced through a by-election if they were removed via a no-confidence motion.
“Despite sending a legal notice to the Haryana Election Commission on February 5, raising these concerns, the commission has remained completely silent for over three weeks.
No official response has been provided, nor has any public notice been issued to justify the legality of the Ambala Mayor by-election under Section 13(1) of the Haryana Municipal Corporation Act”, said advocate Hemant asserting that the commission’s silence does not mean that the election’s legal validity cannot be challenged in the High Court.
As the election approaches, these legal ambiguities cast uncertainty over the entire by-election process, raising concerns about potential judicial intervention in the future.