The question whether the Election Commission of India increases assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana remains unanswered. This is so despite Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh clarifying at the Southern States development council meeting in Bangalore recently that it would not be possible to hike seats.

Mr. Singh’s response came after AP Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu raised the issue and asked for the Centre’s action so far. Now reports came to the fore that Rajnath Singh did not exactly say that there was no such seats revision exercise going on at the national level. This led to the issue resurfacing once again raising curiosity in political circles.

Now the Union Home Ministry has written a letter to Election Commission to specify whether there will be an increase in SC, ST reserved seats after Khammam’s seven submergence mandals in Telangana are merged in neighbouring Assembly constituencies of AP. In turn, EC has sought clarifications over which mandals have to be merged with which assembly segment.

Because of this correspondence over reserved seats, the old subject of assembly seats increase might have come to the surface again.

Khammam submergence mandals will have to be merged with Polavaram and Rampachodavaram mandals in AP by taking delimitation exercise. Probably, this is the issue currently being tackled by EC and not the demand for increase in overall seats in twin Telugu seats.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Marri Sasidhar Reddy filed a petition in High Court seeking a direction to the EC not to go ahead with the Telangana elections without completing the delimitation of assembly segments to merge Khammam submergence mandals in AP segments as per the Reorganisation promises.

G.RaviKiran