In a relief to seven disqualified corporators, including the mayor of Kolhapur Municipal Corporation (KMC), the Bombay high court on Monday granted stay on the order disqualifying them.
In a relief to seven disqualified corporators, including the mayor of Kolhapur Municipal Corporation (KMC), the Bombay high court on Monday granted stay on the order disqualifying them.
About 20 of the 81 corporators in the Kolhapur Municipal Corporation have failed to produce valid caste certificates after the polls. Of these, seven have been disqualified and the remaining 13 may not face severe action as they had attended the every hearing of caste validation committee.
Aggrieved by the decision, the corporators had moved the vacation bench of the high court that stayed the order of disqualification.
The division bench of Justice A.S. Gadlaro and Justice M.S. Karnik granted stay on the order disqualifying the applicants till June 20 when the matter would be heard again.
The court on Monday granted relief to mayor Ashwini Ramane, Vrushali Kadam, Deepa Magdum and Sandeep Nejdar (Congress), Santosh Gaikwad and Nilesh Desai (BJP) and Sachin Patil (NCP).
The corporators were disqualified after their caste certificates failed to clear the scrutiny of the state government’s Caste Verification Committee.
All the corporators were disqualified after the Caste Verification Committee had invalidated caste certificates on request of KMC commissioner P. Shivshankar had submitted a report to the secretary of the state urban development department seeking action against 20 KMC corporators. All these persons were elected from the Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Class categories in the civic elections last year without submitting valid caste certificates.
