The court set aside the notification for the polls on a petition from Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader and Rajya Sabha member R S Barathy alleging that rules were not followed and mandatory reservation for Scheduled Tribes was not provided in the civic posts.
Allowing the petition, the court directed that polls be held by December following issuance of a fresh notification.
As many as 4,97,840 nominations were filed by candidates to contest from over 1.31 lakh civic body posts, including 1,18,974 posts in rural and 12,820 posts in urban local bodies.
A similar civic poll related plea of the DMK is pending in the Supreme Court.
The State Election Commission had announced that all preparations were done and it had directed poll observers -27 IAS officials and 8 District Revenue Officers- to be stationed at their respective districts.