Hyderabad High Court to see if state can amend Act through executive order

Hyderabad: As per the court’s interim direction, the GHMC poll process will be completed by the end of the first week of February instead of January 31, 2016 in accordance to the assurance given by the TS government and the State Election Commission to the court earlier.

A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice S.V. Bhatt of the Hyderabad High Court, while hearing a batch of petitions with regard to the GHMC polls, ordered the SEC to complete the election process within 31 days.

The court said, “Under any circumstances the state government should issue notification for wards reservation on or before Saturday and then the SEC should immediately issue notification for elections and the entire election process should be completed within 31 days from the date of issue of notification.”

The bench turned down the plea of the counsel appearing for Congress’ Marri Shashidhar Reddy to direct the government to grant a week to file objections from the date of notification of the reservation of wards to file objections.

Mr Reddy had moved the plea seeking that SEC and the government should stick to the schedule of 40 days as had been stated before the court in an earlier case.

Chakilam Raghunadha Rao from the city had also challenged the reduction of poll schedule from 21-28 days to 15 days by amending Section 33.

D.V. Seetharama Murthy, senior counsel appearing for one Mahesh Goud, argued that amending a statute through an executive order was not permissible by law. He said the state government had given a misinterpretation to Section 101 of the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014 while amending the GHMC Act.

K. Ramakrishna Reddy, advocate-general of TS, defending the action of the government, contended that the 2014 Act gave power to amend the Act through executive orders.

Reacting to the submission of the AG, the bench pointed out that a GO had already been issued adapting the GHMC Act to TS and if a new amendment is to be made it can be done through an Ordinance or through an Act passed by the legislature.

The AG said the poll schedule was reduced in order to stick to the earlier schedule given to the court to complete the elections by January 31.

While pointing out that prima facie the Bench felt that this reduction in the time schedule may not be correct, it adjourned the matter to 2.15 pm to facilitate the AG to inform the court when the final notification for reservation of wards was likely to be issued.

When the bench resumed hearing post lunch, the AG said that the notification would likely be issued in a day or two.

Counsel for the SEC submitted that the Commission required 31 working days to complete the election process after notification of reservation of wards.

While granting the interim order, the bench stated that the issue of competency of the government to amend an Act through an executive order would be decided after the Sankranti vacation in the final hearing.