Telangana HC Rejects Pleas On Panchayat Poll Quota Rules

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Thursday declined to intervene in the gram panchayat election process, rejecting a batch of petitions that challenged the reservation of sarpanch and ward member seats for communities with negligible or no representation in several villages. A division bench of Justice P. Sam Koshy and Justice Suddala Chalapathi Rao held that the constitutional bar under Article 243-O prohibited judicial interference once the election notification had been issued.

The petitioners contended that the authorities relied on outdated 2011 Census data without taking into consideration the reorganisation and bifurcation of panchayats that occurred after the creation of Telangana in 2014. They argued that this approach resulted in anomalous situations where seats were reserved for communities with either no population or just a single individual in certain panchayats. The petitioners urged the court to direct the State Election Commission (SEC) to either de-reserve such seats, declare them as open category, or defer elections in these panchayats to a subsequent phase.

The SEC submitted that any judicial intervention at this stage would disrupt reservations already allocated across the state and disturb the 50 per cent reservation ceiling. It informed the bench that the nomination process for the first two phases had concluded and the third phase was underway, making any alteration impracticable.

The court observed that the issues raised by the petitioners were substantial and stemmed from administrative lapses, particularly the failure to update demographic bases for reservation after structural changes in local bodies. The bench remarked that such an exercise should have been undertaken well before the election schedule was announced. Nevertheless, it held that the constitutional embargo prevented the court from halting or modifying the electoral process mid-way.

While disposing of the pleas, the court recorded the SEC’s assurance that in panchayats where elections fail due to the absence of eligible candidates in reserved categories, fresh elections would be conducted after consultation with the state government once the current process concluded. The court preserved the petitioners’ right to approach the competent authorities after the elections.