HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad high court on Wednesday gave the green signal to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to publish the latest voters’ list of all constituencies in Telangana. A bench of Chief Justice TB Radhakrishnan and Justice S V Bhatt made this interim order while hearing a public interest litigation filed by former minister and Congress leader Marri Sashidhar Reddy who charged the ECI with coming out with faulty and defective electoral lists.
The bench earlier stayed the final publication of this list which was scheduled to happen on October 8. On Wednesday, it heard ECI counsel Avinash Desai and vacated the stay. However. it sought an affidavit from the ECI by October 12 which should convey the modalities and various stages of the final publication like making available the details of booth-wise lists etc. The ECI is all set to publish its final list on October 12.
Petitioner’s counsel Jandhyala Ravi Shankar told the court that EC need not get carried away by the urgency displayed by the ruling party and cited the example of former Chief Election Commissioner J M Lingdo who blunted the electoral advantage sought to be taken by TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu in 2003 when the latter went in for a pre-mature dissolution of AP assembly. Then CEC stoutly refused to hurry the poll process in tune with the wishes of the political parties in power. Instead, he allowed emotions to calm down and then conducted the polls five months after the Naxalite attack on Naidu. Sashidhar annexed several documents pertaining to the alleged irregularities in the voter lists.
Avinash told the bench that the petitioner filed the case on defects in voter lists when the final list is still being prepared. “He can complain after the final publication is done. In fact, the process of purification of voter lists is a continuous process and can be done till the last date for withdrawing nominations in polls,” he said. The bench posted the case to Friday.