Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday admitted a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition seeking to put on hold elections to Telangana Assembly till completion of the delimitation of constituencies related to seven mandals of Khammam revenue division of Telangana. These mandals were transferred to the successor State of Andhra Pradesh after creation of separate Telangana State.
The petition filed by former minister and Congress leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy was moved as lunch motion by his counsel Jandhyala Ravi Shankar. After hearing the lawyer’s contentions, the Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Thottathil B. Radhakrishnan and Justice V. Ramasubramanian issued notices to the governments of the Centre and the States of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh along with the Election Commission of India.
The Election Commissions of the two States and Union Ministries of Law and Justice and Home Affairs were among the other respondents in the petition. Posting the matter to September 25, the Bench directed the respondents to file affidavits on the points raised through the petition.
Mr. Ravi Shankar contended that voters of these seven mandals were distributed among three Assembly and two Lok Sabha constituencies in 2014. By virtue of transfer of these mandals, the electors are living in AP though they voted for Telangana MLAs and MPs during previous election. This is an anomaly that needs to be corrected for proper conduct of elections in 2019.
This would require delimitation of the Assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies of the two States linked to the seven mandals, the lawyer argued. To achieve this, the Parliamentary and Assembly Delimitation Order, 2008 needs to be amended to exclude the seven mandals from Telangana and include the same in A.P.
This would be possible only if Section 9 of the Representation of the People Act-1950 and Section 11 of the Delimitation Act-2002 were modified accordingly, he presented to the Bench.
