HYDERABAD: In a relief to the State government, a division bench of Telangana High Court on Tuesday refused to stay the elections to be held shortly for ZPTC and MPTC posts in the State. The issue of notification cannot be stayed and the elections must go on, the bench noted.The bench, however, issued notices to the respondent authorities -- State Secretary to Law and Legislative Affairs, Principal Secretary to Panchayat Raj, commissioner of Panchayat Raj, Principal Secretary to Backward Classes Welfare, Chief Electoral Officer of State Election Commission, Directorate of Economics and Statistics and managing director of Telangana State BC Cooperative Finance Corporation -- for filing counter affidavits within three weeks on the contentions raised by the petitioner regarding the elections.
The bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A Rajasheker Reddy passed this order after a petition was filed by J Srinivas Goud, president of Telangana State Backward Classes Association. It urged the authorities concerned not to issue any notification for ZPTC and MPTC elections until the completion of enumeration of the Backward Classes so as to provide reservations to the community in proportion to their population.
Senior counsel KG Krishna Murthy, appearing for the petitioner, urged the court to suspend operation of GO Rt No. 81 issued by the Panchayat Raj and Rural Development Department on March 2, 2019 providing procedure for reservations for the BCs. He pointed out that the State government has not collected data on BC voters till date.
The government has also not taken up the ward-wise enumeration of BC population, the counsel said. Without completing the mandatory procedures, the State had been mulling over issuing election notification for ZPTC and MPTC, he added.The bench said that there was no fault in issuance of the aforementioned GO which provides reservations in consonance with the Telangana Panchayat Raj Act.