Hyderabad: The Telangana State Election Commission (TEC) on Thursday, October 9, suspended the Gram Panchayat and Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies (ZPTC) elections after the state high court on the same day passed an interim stay order on GO 9 which enhanced Backward Classes (BC) reservations for the local body polls to 42 percent.
The state government has been given four weeks to file a counter-affidavit and the petitioners have been asked to file a response to the government’s affidavit in two weeks thereafter. This decision comes after two days of arguments in the High Court, where the petitioners had challenged the legality of the reservations being increased to 67 percent for the Telangana local body elections, in violation of Supreme Court’s cap of 50 percent.
Prior to this, the Supreme Court had asked the petitioners in the case to approach the high court. The State Election Commission on Thursday passed the requisite gazette notifications putting the Telangana local body elections in abeyance. The local body polls were slated to begin from October 23 and nominations were in fact to begin on October 9 as well.
After the state cabinet deciding to implement 42 percent reservations for Backward Classes (BC), the government on September 26 passed an order to implement it in view of the Telangana local body elections. This was done even in spite of the bill related to it still waiting for the President of India’s assent.
According to GO MS 09, the Telangana government decided to implement the order based on the one man commission’s (ex-IAS officer Busani Venkateshwara Rao) recommendations to have more adequate political representation for BC communities.
It may be noted that both the Telangana Congress and the main opposition Bharat Rashtra have been talking about higher representation for BCs in local body elections ever since the state was formed in 2014. The BRS even wanted to have 50% reservations but it was not able to achieve it.
Earlier on August 30, BC welfare minister Ponnam Prabhakar announced that the state government will conduct local body elections by implementing 42 percent reservations for Backward Classes (BC). When media representatives questioned about any possible legal complications that could arise, he got irritated and downplayed those apprehensions.
