Uttam suspects foul play; urges CEC to put off MLC elections

Hyderabad: TPCC president Uttam Kumar Reddy on Thursday wrote to Chief Election Commissioner of India Sunil Arora requesting him to postpone the MLC elections under Local Bodies quota in Telangana.

Thanking the CEC for giving patient hearing of Congress concerns and grievances presented to the full commission on May 8 at 12.45 pm by AICC National Spokesperson Dr Sravan Dasoju, Uttam Kumar Reddy said there was yet another serious flaw be noted by the Election Commission in the conduct of elections for three MLCs through local bodies. As per the scheduled released on May 6 night, from May 7 onwards, it is allowed to file the nominations and today i.e May 9 and so far no voters list was published by the ECI/CEO, Telangana. In order to file nomination, every candidate is mandated to be proposed by at least 10 elections and how it would be possible in the absence of published voters list, he asked. It also means that the candidates have lost two days i.e May 7 and 8 to file their nominations and one is not sure when the votes list would be finally published. When new elections of MPTC/ZPTC will come into existence on May 27, it is illogical to conduct election on May 31 with old ZPTCs and MPTCs.

When almost all the national and regional parties represented to Telangana CEO on May 7 evening regarding many procedural deficiencies and abbreviations, he stated that ECI had taken all the decisions. He also agreed that no voters list was as yet displayed. “By examining various aspects of the issue, we arrived at a logical conclusion that the State government has influenced the ECI / CEO Telangana to hapazardously release three MLCs notification and conduct elections with old electors when polling for new electors was completed”.

“If at all as per the law, there was a need to complete the elections of three MLCs within six months from the time they were vacant why that the Election Commission did not conduct these elections along with Graduates and Teachers MLCs elections that were held in March”. He pointed out that the three local body MLC seats were vacant from December 2018. Therefore, we strongly feel there was some conspiracy in the whole issue as to why the schedule was given on May 6 night and notification on May 7 morning without prior public display of voters list.

[source_without_link]NSS[/source_without_link]