HYDERABAD: Claiming that pre-election activities in all municipalities of the State were completed in a scientific manner and not in haste as alleged by the petitioners, the Telangana government on Wednesday urged the High Court to grant permission to complete elections to 131 municipalities, which included old and newly constituted one out of 141 existing municipalities in the state. The department is fully geared up to conduct elections to these municipalities and put the elected body in place without any further delay, it added.
The government, represented by principal secretary to Municipal Administration and Urban Development Arvind Kumar, filed an additional counter-affidavit with the above submissions before a division bench dealing with two PILs seeking a stay on issuance of notification to conduct municipal elections and to re-conduct entire pre-poll exercise in the manner prescribed under the Municipalities Act.
On an earlier occasion, the bench termed the contents mentioned in the counter affidavit filed earlier by the government as vague and unclear and directed it to file a detailed additional counter affidavit apprising the court of the reasons why some of the objections received by it in some of the municipalities could not be considered under the law.
The government, in its counter affidavit, has maintained a studied silence as to the procedure followed while considering 665 objections and rejecting the rest out of 1373 received by it during the pre-poll process. Even the period of the pre-election process was reduced from 109 days to eight days, the bench pointed out and posed several queries to the government.
On Wednesday, Additional Advocate General J Ramachandra Rao placed the additional counter affidavit before the court and urged the bench to hear the case. The bench, however, posted the matter to August 28 to hear the petitioners’ arguments.
The government stated that the violations pointed out in the petitions were being examined. The pending pre-election process would be done and elections to the local bodies would be conducted in a fair and transparent manner. Pending activities would be undertaken by following the procedure prescribed in various sections in Ordinance 6 of 2019 and it may take a couple of days, it noted.