The Supreme Court (SC) has postponed the final hearing on a writ petition filed against Election Commission (EC)’s decision to hold re-polling in Bharatpur Metropolis-19 for the third time.

A division bench of justices duo Om Prakash Mishra and Purushottam Bhandari was scheduled to hear the case on Monday but the hearing was postponed once again citing time constraint. The next hearing has been scheduled for July 17.

The delay in the hearing of the case has adversely affected the people of Bharatpur metropolis, who were waiting for timely justice on the case.

The case was due for hearing by a joint bench of Supreme Court Justices Mira Khadka and Anil Kumar Sinha on July 7. But the hearing was deferred until Monday due to time constraint.

On June 27, the EC officials had handed over necessary documents of the Bharatpur Metropolis-19, including the damaged ballot papers, to the SC Secretariat. The court on June 20 had directed the authorities to produce the damaged ballot papers, among other documents, within a week.

The EC on June 3 had decided to conduct re-election at Ward 19 of Bharatpur Metropolitan City based on a report prepared by a probe team comprising the Office of the Chief Election Officer, Chitwan District Election Office and representatives of the Election Commission.

On June 4, a writ petition was filed at the apex court, seeking annulment of the EC decision, by BK and Pandey, responding to which the SC on June 5 had issued an interim order, directing the EC to maintain status quo on its decision to conduct re-polling.

CPN-UML’s Devi Prasad Gywali was leading the race against CPN (Maoist Centre) candidate Renu Dahal, the daughter of party Chairman and erstwhile prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, when the incident occurred.

The vote count in Bharatpur-19 was halted after a group of Maoist Centre cadres allegedly stormed into the counting centre and tore 90 ballot papers on May 28.