Hyderabad: Justice A. Rajasheker Reddy of the Telangana High Court on Thursday proposed a repeat of the delimitation and other pre-poll processes for the municipal elections and sought the opinion of the petitioners and the state government.
The court was attempting to break the logjam caused by stay orders granted on 74 petitions, which have stalled elections in 67 municipalities.
The judge asked the petitioners to submit their response by Friday morning on whether or not they agree with the proposal. The court proposed to give one week to the people to submit objections to the pre-poll process including delimitation of wards.
The court said it will direct the state government and officials in 67 municipalities to resolve the grievances in 10 days by hearing the ward wise objections.
The judge said he would dispose of the cases where the petitioners and the government agree, and adjudicate the others.
Earlier, Additional Advocate General J. Ramachandra Rao submitted that the pre-poll process had been done according to Sections 4 and 5 of the Municipalities Act. He said the petitioners had moved court with an intention to delay the elections.
Counsels for some of the petitioners said that Section 8 of the Telangana Municipali-ties Act had not been followed and requested the court to direct it to issue fresh draft notification to call for objections. The court did not agree.
G Vidyasagar, senior counsel representing the State Election Commission, said the scheduled time to conduct elections was over six months ago. Issuing a fresh notification would cause more delay. Following this, the judge made the proposal.
In July, a single judge had stayed elections in 67 municipalities based on these petitions.
