HYDERABAD: A PIL case was filed in the Hyderabad High Court challenging the recent amendments made by TS government to the Acts of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), municipalities and municipal corporations in the state. With these amendments, the state government gets the power to fix the timings for the conduct of elections and that the State Election Commission has to necessarily obtain permission from the government to conduct elections, it noted.
The Forum for Good Governance, an organisation represented by its secretary M Padmanabha Reddy, submitted that these amendments have given explicit and infinite implicit reasons to the executive to fix the notification and schedules of elections to local bodies which was otherwise the exclusive power of the state election commission.
The justification shown like exams to school children, festivals and so on for deciding the dates for municipal elections was a lame excuse and to usurp the powers of the election commission. In fact, there were many instances where the state government did not cooperate with the state election commission for conducting municipal elections.
The petitioner forum urged the court to set aside the above amendments. State chief secretary and secretary to law and legislative affairs were named as the respondents. The matter is expected to come up for hearing on Tuesday.