Submit civic body election schedule in 1 week, Hyderabad HC tells Telangana govt,GHMC Election,GHMC Election 2015,Hyderabad Municipal Corporation
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- Last Updated: Wednesday, 01 April 2015 12:54
GHMC Election 2015: Submit civic body election schedule in 1 week, Hyderabad HC tells Telangana govt
Hyderabad: Refusing to give time till December, 2015, as sought by Telanagana authorities for conducting the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections, the Hyderabad high court on Monday gave a week's time to the state government to come out with a revised schedule.
The bench, comprising Chief Justice Kalyan Jyoti Sengupta and Justice Sanjay Kumar, issued the order while hearing a plea by M Padmanabha Reddy of the Forum for Good Governance who challenged the state's decision to postpone the elections even though the Constitution allows for no such provision.
The Telangana government said that due to delay in the allocation of All India Services officers to the two states, it could not carry out the delimitation process. Therefore, it would require 249 days to initiate the poll process for holding civic polls, it said.
When the petitioner's counsel Sivaraj Srinivas objected to the state's contentions and its stand seeking further time, the bench advised him to file his objections and posted the case to next week.
In an earlier hearing, the bench had directed the Telangana government to submit the election schedule for conducting the GHMC polls. In the counter, the state municipal administration department principal secretary MG Gopal submitted that the administration of various departments was affected for several months due to delay in cadre allocation of AIS officers to the state. As the civic body's elected term ended on Dec 3, 2014, a special officer was appointed to carry out the administration for six months.
Referring to the high court order issued in August last year for carrying out delimitation of wards in GHMC, Gopal said that the state has initiated the process of delimitation as per Census 2011 and proposed to fix the strength of elected members of GHMC at 200.
A total of 249 days is required for delimitation of wards, preparation of ward-wise and polling station-wise electoral rolls, conducting door to door surveys for identifying backward caste (BC) voters, publication of final ward-wise electoral rolls with BC voters and notifying reserved seats for SCs, STs, BCs, women, etc.
The election process will be initiated after completion of the aforesaid statutory process, Gopal added.
He further submitted that the readiness report of the government will be sent to the State Election Commission by the econd week of December, 2015, for conducting general elections to the GHMC. The matter will be heard again on Monday.
src:timesofindia