HYDERABAD: A division bench of the Hyderabad High Court on Thursday made it clear to the Election Commission of India that the Court has not restrained it from continuing with updating process regarding electoral rolls in Telangana State.
The bench comprising Chief Justice TBN Radhakrishnan and Justice SV Bhatt was dealing with the PIL filed by senior Congress leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy alleging large scale discrepancies to the extent of about 70 lakh voters in the rolls. He sought direction to the ECI to weed out duplicate voters before conduct of polls to the state legislative assembly. On earlier occasion, the bench lifted the restriction imposed by it on October 5 on the voters’ list and permitted the ECI to publish the final electoral rolls as per schedule.
When the matter came up for hearing, the petitioner’s counsel submitted that there were still errors in the voters’ list and were not rectified. On the other hand, the ECI counsel told the court that the commission was not in a position to do its work because of filing of petitions repeatedly. The commission was ready to rectify the mistakes in the voters’ list if the petitioners could bring it to its notice, he added.
After hearing both the sides, the bench said the affidavits filed by the petitioners would not come in the way of the ECI in performing its duties. Even the Court has not put any hurdle to the commission in this regard.
Awareness campaigns in Hyderabad to boost voter turnout
Hyderabad: THE district election officer has initiated a series of measures to boost the polling percentage in 15 constituencies of Hyderabad. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, in consultation with the Hyderabad DEO and GHMC Commissioner M Dana Kishore, has proposed to conduct a series of awareness programmes to encourage voters. DEO has prepared a schedule and 18 places have been identified, which include degree colleges, public parks and other places, to conduct the awareness campaigns. The awareness programmes across the city will be held from November 3 to December 4