A PIL petition challenging implementation of State government’s flagship programme Dalit Bandhu in Huzurabad Assembly constituency, where by-election is to be held anytime soon, was filed in the Telangana High Court.
The plea filed by social activist Akkala Suresh Kumar with the State government, Election Commission of India, Telangana Chief Electoral Officer and ruling TRS is likely to come up for hearing on Monday. The petitioner sought a direction to the government to enforce the scheme in any of the 16 Assembly constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes in the State, instead of Huzurabad which is an open Assembly seat.
Though specific dates were not announced, by-election in Huzurabad was required as MLA Eatala Rajender, who got elected on TRS ticket in 2018, resigned from the post after being dropped from the State Cabinet. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao announced the Dalit Bandhu scheme to be enforced in this constituency as a pilot project.
The petitioner mentioned that the CM, during a recent speech, had stated that TRS was not a monastery of monks, suggesting that there was nothing wrong in proposing such a scheme in the backdrop of elections. “We are living among people and will definitely look for political gains in whatever we do…,” the CM was quoted as saying by the petitioner.
This showed that the TRS wanted to use government schemes to derive political mileage in the Huzurabad by-election, the petitioner said.
He contended that the ECI had to fix a minimum time, preferably six months, for implementation of such schemes to ensure free and fair election. He referred to the case of S. Subramaniam Balaji vs State of Tamil Nadu and others in which the Supreme Court ordered that guidelines should be framed for political parties to announce freebies before elections.
Taking advantage of the government not fixing any guidelines, the TRS had planned Dalit Bandhu envisaging financial assistance of ₹10 lakh to each eligible Dalit family to influence voters, the petitioner said.
