The petitioners said that the state government had reserved the posts by taking the population of the ST and SC communities as per 2011 Census and BC reservations on the basis of SEEEPC-2024 data.
Hyderabad:Justice T. Madhavi Devi of the Telangana High Court on Tuesday referred to a division bench, a batch of writ petitions challenging the reservation roster notified for the gram panchayat elections. The petitions were filed by residents of villages where the sarpanch and ward members seats in panchayats had been reserved for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes or Backward Classes communites despite the admitted absence, or extremely negligible presence, of such communities.
The petitioners said that the state government had reserved the posts by taking the population of the ST and SC communities as per 2011 Census and BC reservations on the basis of SEEEPC-2024 data. In the process, the seats had been reserved in villages where there was either no population of concerned community, of they were present in negligible numbers. They feared that such seats would remain vacant.
The writ petitioners sought reconsideration of the reservations in these villages and the holding of elections on the basis of current population.
The state, represented by special government pleader Rahul Reddy, submitted that for reservations for the SC and ST communities, the law mandated that only the 2011 Census data be relied upon. The government could not take into account the present local population figures while determining reservation categories.
It was further argued that altering reservations based on contemporary population would disrupt the statutory roster and create administrative complications.
Justice Madhavi Devi observed that conducting elections in villages where reserved categories have no population would result in uncontested or vacant seats, undermining democratic governance at the village level. Any judicial direction altering the roster could also have wider administrative and financial implications.
In view of these complexities, the judge directed the registry to place the matters before a division bench for appropriate consideration and listed the cases on December 3.
