Will hold polls if villages’ merger is illegal: Govt to HC

HYDERABAD: The Telangana government assured the high court on Friday that it would conduct elections to all gram panchayats that were merged in the nearest municipal corporations if the court strikes down their merger as illegal.

“We will conduct elections within 21 days of such a judgment,” additional advocate general J Ramachandra Rao told the bench of Chief Justice TB Radhakrishnan and Justice A Rajasheker Reddy, which was hearing nearly 95 petitions challenging the merger of scores of villages into municipalities and corporations in Karimnagar, Khammam, Rajanna Sircilla, Ranga Reddy, Nizamabad, Nalgonda, Medak and Mahabubnagar districts.

Earlier the court had stayed such mergers. The bench, while recording the state’s assurance, tagged all the pleas together for a joint hearing on January 21.

Appearing for the petitioners, senior counsel Vedula Venkata Ramana said that since all the mergers were stayed by the court earlier, the state and election commission must hold elections to all such panchayats, but the authorities have excluded these villages from the current election process pertaining to the gram panchayat elections. Appearing for some more petitioners, advocate B Rachna Reddy said that the mergers are illegal and were done without considering the constitutional protection accorded to the Panchayats or obtaining their consent.

In his argument, Vedula said the state had failed to follow constitutional procedures while merging the villages with municipalities. “The powers accorded to panchayats after the 73 and 74th amendments to the Constitution are vast and the state cannot so easily tinker with them. For merging, the governor should issue the notification and not the legislature,” he said.

The counsel for Telangana state, however, said that the decision of a state legislature should be kept on a higher pedestal than the order of a governor and cited Supreme Court orders to justify the action of the state in this regard.