The two-year delay in conducting the Punjab municipal elections has put the Bhagwant Mann-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in a spot. On Monday, the Supreme Court directed the Mann government to conduct the polls in five municipal corporations and 43 municipal councils within eight weeks.

Earlier, the AAP government drew heat for delaying the panchayat elections. After a rap from the Punjab and Haryana High Court, it conducted the panchayat polls on October 15.

The Opposition charged that the Mann government was delaying these elections because it was afraid of suffering a “rout” in them. The AAP received a setback in the recent Lok Sabha elections in Punjab, when it could win only three seats out of 13 as against the Congress’s seven seats.

Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, Partap Singh Bajwa, said the AAP leaders have “no confidence”. “They are not confident because they have not done any work in municipalities and panchayats. That is why they do not want to hold the elections. AAP is an economically bankrupt government with intellectually bankrupt leaders. What can we expect from them now?… They keep getting raps from the high court, Supreme Court.”

On October 19, the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the Punjab government to conduct elections in all five municipal corporations and 43 councils in the state and notify the date of elections within two weeks.

The last elections in these bodies were held in January 2018, while their term ended in January 2023.

The AAP government then challenged the high court’s order in the Supreme Court, arguing that the municipal elections could not be conducted without a fresh delimitation exercise.

The apex court bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan, while partially modifying the HC order, held that the Punjab government’s reliance on the pending delimitation was misplaced, particularly because no significant changes in population or municipal boundaries had occurred.

“No question of delimitation…You first go and hold the elections. There are two Supreme Court judgments against you. Law mandates that you start the process (of elections) before expiry of the (five-year) term (of the civic bodies),” the bench observed after hearing submissions by Punjab Advocate General Gurminder Singh and senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

AAP spokesperson Neel Garg told The Indian Express: “We just wanted to complete the delimitation process. We are prepared. We are conducting the elections.”

In the Punjab Assembly polls in February 2022, the AAP stormed to power in the state by winning 92 of the 117 seats. But just a few months later, the party lost the bypoll in Sangrur, which was the Lok Sabha seat vacated by Mann after he won the Assembly election.

Then in May 2023, the AAP recorded a win in the Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll when Sushil Rinku won from the seat, capitalising on its free 300 unit power promise.

Insiders in the Punjab government say the AAP dispensation wanted to hold the panchayat elections last year, buoyed by the party’s victory in the Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll.

On August 10 last year, the Punjab government issued a notification to dissolve all the panchayats in the state even as several of them had four to six months of their tenures still left. The government reasoned that there were Rs 1,000 crore in the bank accounts of gram panchayats, and that there was “reasonable apprehension that this precious public money can be misutilised or unnecessarily utilised to lure residents of the village for personal gain by elected panchayat representatives”.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Gurjeet Singh Talwandi, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) general secretary, challenged the notification.

Later in August, the Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered the government to withdraw the notification, stating that “the government could not dissolve democratically elected bodies without these completing their stipulated term”.

Left red faced, the government withdrew the notification and suspended two IAS officers — D K Tiwari, the administrative secretary of Rural Development and Panchayat, and Gurpreet Singh Khaira, the director of Rural Development — for “having misled the government” on the panchayats and their finances.

The Lok Sabha elections were held earlier this year, which further delayed the panchayat elections. A poor show in the Lok Sabha elections seemed to have made the AAP delay the panchayat elections further.

In September, the Mann government passed an amendment to the Punjab Panchayati Raj Act, barring sarpanches and panches from contesting elections on party symbols.

While Mann said this was a way of ensuring “bonhomie” in villages, the Opposition said the move stemmed from the AAP’s fear of losing the panchayats, especially after the Lok Sabha results. The panchayat elections were contested without symbols. All parties claimed victory as there was no way to count any party’s seats in absence of symbols.

Now, the civic body elections are set to be conducted on the party symbols, following which each contender’s performance will be evaluated.aluated.