The High Court of Andhra Pradesh has given its go-ahead to the State Election Commission to conduct the municipal elections as per its recent notification. As such, the civil polls will now be held on March 10 and counting will be on March 14. The court has dismissed over 16 petitions which challenged the legality of the re-start of the civic polls after a year’s time.

The municipal polls were actually begun in March last year itself. But they were postponed at that time because of the Covid pandemic. Now, the petitioners claimed that it was not correct on the part of SEC Ramesh Kumar to go ahead with the restart of the elections without giving a chance to the new voters to take part in the election process.

The petitioners sought the court to issue an order to stall the elections and issue a fresh notification after duly taking into account the aspirations of the new young voters. However, the SEC lawyers contended that once an election process began, there was no chance to stall the same. The constitutional requirement was that it should be completed without fail.

Ever since the SEC restarted the local body elections, the YCP has been creating one hurdle or another. Now, the petitioners’ efforts to stall the elections went in vain.

With this, the stage is set for another tension-filled battle between the YCP and the TDP candidates with both the parties claiming having tactical and public support.