The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Friday refused to interfere in the ongoing municipal election process in Punjab after holding that the matter had reached an advanced stage and “the petitioners had approached the court very late in the day”.The Bench dismissed the petitions, but granted liberty to the petitioners to assail the election process through an election petition after the polls.Delivering the operative oral directions in open court, the Bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sanjiv Berry noted the timing and stage of the electoral cycle as decisive factors in declining judicial intervention.“It is now too late in the day for us to pass any orders or issue any writ since the election program was published as early as May 13. The election program of municipal elections has progressed to an advanced stage, where the last date of withdrawal of candidature was May 19.” The order came just about four days before elections to Municipal Corporations, Municipal Councils and Nagar Panchayats. The matter has its genesis in a bunch of petitions challenging the decision to switch from EVMs to ballot papers during the polls.The petitioner had assailed the decision as a return “to a bygone era”. It was argued the validity of EVM-based voting had been consistently upheld by constitutional courts. Heavy reliance was placed on the Supreme Court judgment in Association for Democratic Reforms versus Election Commission of India and others, before contending that any attempt to discredit the EVM system undermines democratic processes and “must be nipped in the bud”.The Election Commission of India (ECI) on the previous date of hearing had told the Bench that EVMs requisitioned for the elections were already “in transit” from Rajasthan to Punjab and that the remaining process of commissioning the machines could be completed in “just one day”.The ECI, represented through counsel Prateek Gupta, had added that the only requirement now was for the State Election Commission to specify the delivery location and identify the officer authorised to receive the machines. It was added that the machines were dispatched after the Punjab authorities showed reluctance in lifting them independently.Punjab on the other hand had raised objections to the maintainability of the petitions. Advocate-General Maninderjit Bedi had earlier opposed the petition on the grounds of maintainability. Quoting the apex court, Bedi contended that the process could not be interfered with after the issuance of election notification. The Bench was also told that the process of printing the ballot papers was already under way.  The State Election Commission’s stand in the matter was that even if machines were made available, 15 to 18 days would be required for deployment-related processes, making EVM-based polling impracticable with less than a week left for elections.