SEC blames Telangana on civic polls
Panel chief says SEC acted at state’s request; says 20 days need for elections.
Hyderabad: Making it clear that it did not relate to the ongoing controversy on division and delimitation of wards in municipalities, the Telangana State Election Commission (SEC) informed the Telangana High Court that it required a maximum of 20 days to conduct elections to the Urban Local Bodies (ULB) in the state, after determination of reservations to the wards by the state government.
Following the High Court directions to submit its response to the PIL challenging the delimitation of wards without considering the objection of citizens and voters on the division of wards, the SEC filed a counter affidavit on Monday.
Mr M. Ashok Kumar, the secretary of the SEC, informed the court that the Telangana state government had changed its decision in conducting elections to the 75 municipalities and three municipal corporations (Niza-mabad, Karimnagar, and Ramagundam), whose terms came to an end in the first week of July.
He said that the state had communicated to the SEC that it was contemplating a new Municipali-ties Act, duly repealing the existing Telangana Municipalities Act, which resulted in the publication of the voter list that was delayed. Later, the government changed its decision to decided to conduct elections with the existing Act and as a result it would like to complete the election process by the end of July.
“In line with the change of the state government, finalisation of wards’ delimitation process was to be completed by July 7 and reservations by July 14,” the secretary submitted to the court.
However, defending the SEC’s role in shortening the time to 10 days for preparation and publication of Electoral Rolls for conducting the elections to the ULBs, Mr. Ashok submitted that, according to the existing rules, the municipal electoral rolls were to be prepared based on the available Assembly polls’ electoral rolls.
He submitted that the software developed by the SEC in 2015, named Te- Poll helped them in preparation of the voter list within the short time. If the court gave a direction in this case, the SEC would require only seven days for the revision of municipal electoral rolls, the secretary told the court in the affidavit.
While dealing with the PIL, ten days ago, the division bench comprising Chief Justice Raghaven-dra Singh Chauhan and Justice Shameem Akther had directed the state government and SEC to submit their stand on the contentions raised in the petition, which alleged the state was in a hurry to conduct the ULB polls.