Lucknow, May 12 The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has directed Lucknow's mayor, municipal commissioner and district magistrate to appear before it on Wednesday in connection with the delay in administering oath to a corporator declared elected by an election tribunal.
A bench of Justice Alok Mathur and Justice Amitabh Kumar Rai passed the order on Monday on a petition filed by Lalit Kishore Tiwari, who was declared elected from Ward No 73, Faizullaganj in the state capital.
Tiwari is also the general secretary of Oudh Bar Association of the high court.
Pradeep Kumar Shukla contested the election as a candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party while Lalit Tiwari had contested on a Samajwadi Party ticket.
Shukla secured 4,972 votes, while Tiwari got 3,298 votes. However, the election tribunal held that Shukla had failed to furnish mandatory information in his nomination papers, amounting to electoral malpractice, and declared his election void.
The court observed that despite the election tribunal declaring Tiwari elected on December 19, 2025, he has not yet been administered oath even after five months.
The bench said that if the oath is not administered by Wednesday, the mayor, municipal commissioner and DM would have to appear personally and explain the delay.
According to the petition, the election tribunal had set aside the election of sitting corporator Pradeep Kumar Shukla and declared the petitioner elected in his place.
Under Section 77 of the Municipal Corporation Act, the tribunal's order becomes effective from the next day itself, making administration of oath mandatory, the petitioner's counsel argued.
Opposing the plea, the counsel for the municipal corporation and the mayor submitted that a first appeal against the tribunal's decision was pending and if the appeal was allowed, the legal position may change.
Senior advocate Gaurav Mehrotra, assisted by Nadeem Murtaza and Utsav Mishra, who appeared for the petitioner, argued that pendency of appeal does not dilute the statutory effect of the election tribunal's order.
