Why this tearing hurry for municipal polls, first resolve objections of the people: HC tells Telangana govt

HYDERABAD: Stating that holding elections is an important feature of democracy and that it is more important to complete the pre-election process in a fair manner, the Telangana high court on Thursday recorded the assurance of the State Election Commission (SEC) that it will hold elections to the 132 municipalities and municipal corporations in the state only after all the objections raised by the voters are resolved in a meaningful manner.
The bench of chief justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and justice Shameem Akther, while hearing a public interest plea filed by BJP leader and advocate K Anju Kumar Reddy of Nirmal district which mainly questioned the "hasty manner" in which the state is rushing to the polls by giving very little time to the delimitation of wards, issue of photo identity cards to the voters in all the wards, identification of voters belonging to SC, ST, BC and women voters in each ward etc.
Arguing the case of the petitioner, Chinnolla Naresh Reddy told the court that the state was given four months time to conduct the election by the high court. Now the state wants to complete the whole process within one month. As a result of this, the time given to the people to raise their objections over wards division, reservation of wards etc was drastically reduced. People are left with no other option other than approaching the court. Already, a single judge of the high court has ordered the state and SEC not to go ahead with the poll process without completing the pre-election process in a meaningful manner, he said.
Additional advocate general J Ramachandra Rao told the court that they are on the verge of completing the pre-poll process in all the 132 municipal bodies and urged the court to consider the fact that objections were raised and cases filed only in respect of ten municipalities. The bench questioned him as to why the state, despite being given ample time, has reduced the time frame drastically for receiving the objections from people and why only one day was earmarked for their resolution. Is it humanly possible to resolve such a huge number of objections on a single day? The actions of the state should reinforce the faith of our people in democracy and the state action should never go in the direction of undermining it, the bench said.
The bench also reminded the state counsel that it is the state election commission that approached the court last month asking it to direct the state to make arrangements for the municipal elections because their term ended on July 2, 2019. Replying on behalf of the SEC, senior counsel G Vidya Sagar told the court that the commission has written letters to all the municipal bodies in the state to completely resolve the objections raised by the people in respect of wards division, etc. We will not issue a poll notification in a hurried manner without satisfying ourselves about their resolution, he said. The bench recorded his assurance, sought counters from both the State and SEC and posted eh case to July 22.