Marri Shasidhar Reddy challenges EC on Khammam delimitation

HYDERABAD: Former minister and Congress leader Marri Shasidhar Reddy on Wednesday challenged the Telangana election process in the Hyderabad high court, contending that the Election Commission has not completed the delimitation exercise.
He told the division bench comprising Chief Justice T B Radhakrishnan and Justice S V Bhatt that Telangana lost seven mandals in Khammam district to AP at the time of bifurcation.The bench has reserved its judgement in the case. The petitioner’s counsel Ravi Shankar Jandhyala said the EC action was unconstitutional. Seven mandals from three ST constituencies in Telangana were merged in AP areas, bringing down the ST population in Telangana by a lakh of votes. The ST reservation takes state as a unit while district is the unit for SC reservations.
The counsel said the EC has no power to delimit any constituency on population and territorial basis. The EC’s limited exercise of delimitation was done in respect of AP and not Telangana. Section 9(1)(b) of Representation of People Act 1950 gives no power to the EC to change the electoral roll for any constituency, he said.
The EC’s counsel Avinash Desai said the petitioner has not challenged the annexation of mandals by parliament and the Centre through legislative route and there was no change in the number of constituencies in the two states.