MLA asks High Court to stop election in United Andhra Pradesh

Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh High Court will on Thursday hear the Election Commission’s stand on a petition challenging elections to Assembly and Lok Sabha seats in United Andhra Pradesh.

D.Y. Das, Congress MLA from Pamarru in Krishna district moved a petition contending that elections in United AP and then allotting elected MLAs to another state that comes into existence at a later date was unconstitutional.

He challenged Section 19 of the AP Reorganisation Act 2014 (Central Act No. 6) contending that none of the Constitutional provisions envisage allotment of a MLA of one state to the Assembly of another state. He said that Parliament can make a law under Article 3 with regard to bifurcation of a state or formation of a new state, but it has no competence to make a law allotting MLAs of one state to another. Referring to Article 172 (1) of the Constitution, he said that the Article mandates that Assembly of every state shall continue for five years from the date of appointment for its first meeting and no longer.

The MLA told the court that since the appointed date is June 2, 2014 for both AP and Telangana, there would be two different legislatures for both the state and thus respondents are bound by Constit-ution to conduct elections only after they come into existence.
He said that though the tenure of elected members of Assembly is gong to expire, there was no Constitutional requirement to hold elections as AP is under President’s Rule which can last for six months.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Kalyan Jyoti Sengupta and Justice P.V. Sanjay Kumar while dealing with the plea, found that there was no proper representation from the EC and junior advocate representing it, sought time to get instructions.

Seemingly dissatisfied of lack of proper representation from the EC , the Chief Justice at one stage decided to order the presence of the Chief Electoral Officer of the AP to explain the stance of the EC. Later the bench directed the Chief Electoral Officer to depute his counsel to assist the court to decide the case on Thursday.