2,100 candidates barred from municipal poll fray in Telangana

HYDERABAD: Two thousand and one hundred candidates, who contested the last municipal elections and failed to submit election expenditure statements, cannot contest in the forthcoming municipal elections. The Telangana State Election Commission (TSEC) is sending a list of candidates to all the district election authorities so that these errant candidates do not enter the fray this time round.
According to official statistics of TSEC, Ramagundam Municipal Corporation tops the list with 363 barred candidates, followed by 132 in Karimnagar Municipal Corporation, 121 in Bodhan municipality and 113 in Adilabad municipality. The barred candidates include municipal chairpersons, municipal vice-chairpersons and ward members.
“This is a huge number of candidates ever barred from contesting elections in the state. The commission wants to send a strong message to the contestants of any election that non-submission of poll expenditure will lead to disqualification,” secretary, TSEC, M Ashok Kumar told TOI on Friday.
The commission is planning to hold the civic polls in the first week of August to 132 urban local bodies, including three municipal corporations — Warangal, Ramagundam and Karimnagar.
As of now, a ward member in a municipal corporation, excluding GHMC, has the maximum limit of Rs 1.5 lakh expenditure, while ward members in a municipality can incur an expenditure of Rs 1 lakh. They have to submit expenditure details to the returning authorities of respective urban local bodies within 45 days of the declaration of the result.
Municipal elections were last held in 2014 and enough time was given to them to submit expenditure details, officials recalled. “But, despite issuing notices, 2,100 candidates did not respond to them, an official said.
Meanwhile, candidates who were disqualified for not submitting expenditure details in the gram panchayats (in previous polls), which turned into municipalities, can contest in these elections. “They were barred under Panchayat Raj Act in earlier panchayats. Since the panchayats have been converted as municipalities last year, the disqualification rule does not apply to them,” the SEC secretary said.