Congress moves High Court against TS municipal polls

Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president and the party MP from Nalgonda Seat N Uttam Kumar Reddy on Wednesday filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Telangana High Court challenging the notification issued by the state election commission for conduct of elections to municipalities and municipal corporations of the state.

In his petition, he told the court that the election commission had issued the notification without notification of reservations to the scheduled tribes(SCs),scheduled castes(SCs) , Backward classes(BCs) and women in 2727 wards from 120 municipalities and 385 divisions from 5 municipal corporations of the state.

He urged the court to issue a writ of mandamus declaring the action of the election commission as illegal, arbitrary and unconstitutional. The MP urged the court to direct the state election commission and the state government to reschedule the election notification issued on December 23,2019. The state election commission issued the notification to commence the election process from January 7,2020.The matter will come up for hearing on Thursday, January 2, before a division bench of the High Court.

The entire opposition in Telangana is up in arms against state election commission for issuing the election schedule without notifying the reservations.With this,the parties are not in a position to select candidates for elections unaware of which seat would be reserved to which category by the election commission later.

Telangana State Election Commissioner Sri V.Nagireddy,IAS participated in live phone in today in connection with Municipal polls pic.twitter.com/pmSyxVZ5vH

— AIR HYDERABAD (@AirHyderabad) December 31, 2019

The opposition parties are alleging 'nexus' between ruling TRS and election commission.They are accusing the election commission of favouring ruling party TRS by keeping reservations issue a 'secret'.The opposition has also accused the election commission of 'leaking' the reservations data to ruling party TRS already and helping it to select suitable candidates to win polls.