It dismissed the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by TPCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy challenging the election schedule issued by the Telagnana State Election Commission (SEC) on December 23.
With this, the hopes of Opposition parties to postpone municipal elections have been dashed.
The SEC issued the election notification within hours after High Court orders.
A division bench of the HC Comprising of the Chief Justice of the state Justice RS Chauhan and Justice A. Abhishek Reddy passed the orders after hearing the arguments of the counsels for the petitioner and the state election commission.
During the course of arguments that lasted for two days , Counsel for the TPCC president, D Prakash Reddy told the HC that election schedule issued by the Election commission was also the election notification as per the Telangana state municipalities Act. He told the court that the election notification should not be released unless the process of reservations of wards of different municipalities and municipal corporations have been completed by the state government.
He also said that the election schedule of the SEC was in complete contradiction to sub sections 1,2 and 3 of section 195 of the Act. He further said that the election commission did not give enough time to aspiring candidates from reserved seats to secure their community certificates to contest the elections.
He told the court that the election commission could re-schedule the elections as the election notification was not released as per article 243K and 243G of Indian constitution and urged the court to issue directions to the state elections to re-schedule the election schedule.
Responding to this , the counsel for the SEC CV Mohan Reddy told the HC that the election schedule released on December 23,2019 by the commission was meant to urge the voters of the state to exercise their vote as per the schedule. He also made it clear that finalisation of the reservations was not the function of the commission and added that the state government was the authority to finalise the reservations of the wards. He further said that the aspiring candidates who want contest from the reserved seats didn’t have to submit their caste certificate and added that it was enough for them to give their self declaration about their community.
After hearing both the arguments, the High Court struck down the PIL and asked SEC to go ahead with the elections as scheduled.
