Thanjavur Bar Association directed to conduct election after list is released

MADURAI: The Madras high court has directed the Thanjavur Bar Association to fix a date to elect office bearers after the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry finalises and releases the list of eligible voters.
The court was hearing the petition filed by nine advocates who are members of the Thanjavur Bar Association challenging the notification to elect officer bearers and sought to conduct the election after preparing a fresh voters list.
Senior counsel K Subramanian appearing for the petitioners submitted that without finalising the validity of the voters list every year, identifying the members who are dead, who are alive, who are all practising and not practising and who have quit their profession for various reasons, election for the officebearers cannot be held and this cannot be considered as a free and fair election.
The standing counsel for the council submitted that voters list sent by the association on January 20 contains 1,149 names and the list has to be properly looked into so as to find who are all eligible voters.
He submitted that if the names of dead people are included in the list, the same have to be removed and a fresh list has to be prepared and sent back to the association. This exercise would take a minimum four weeks.
Taking into account that the list of voters has been sent to the council, a division bench of acting Chief Justice T Raja and justice D Krishnakumar granted four weeks time for the council to finalise the eligible voters list by removing the names of dead people, ineligible voters, who have not paid their subscription, not passed the examination and not submitted declaration forms.
After finalizing the list, the same shall be uploaded in the council website so that the affected people can submit their objections. Needless to mention that only after a fresh voters list is prepared, the date for election to the office bearers of Thanjavur Bar Association shall be fixed, observed the judges while disposing the petition.