A petition filed by former Congress legislator Komireddy Ramchandar challenging the dissolution of the Telangana assembly by Chief Minister K C Rao will be heard by SC next week. Chief Justice of India Dipak Mishra confirmed the hearing after it was mentioned before a bench headed by him. The petition filed by the congress leader and his wife mentioned that dissolving the assembly just before the completion of its term in 9 months was uncalled for and that the state will have to go for an unnecessary election on an unsuitable time at a huge cost.
The Telangana Assembly was dissolved on 6th September. Advocate Rabin Majumder, who had filed the petition, sought declaration of the dissolution of the state assembly as “void” and “unconstitutional”. The petition further mentioned that Rao should be barred from taking any major decision or forms any legislation.
Election Commission (EC), which was planning to hold the Lok Sabha and state assembly election together, was to update the electoral rolls by January next year, but now with the premature dissolution it has to finalize the list in a hurry.
The NDTV quoted the petition which said “To conduct an election without affording an opportunity to all those who are eligible to be in the voters’ list would amount to denial of their constitutional right of exercising their franchise. Since the EC is required to hurriedly finalize the voting list, denial of voting right to a large number of eligible citizens is a fait accompli”.
The petition also questions the appointment of Rao as caretaker chief minister by Telangana Governor ESL Narasimhan, saying that such provision allows the minister to be unaccountable to the legislature and the people and letting him to be a CM for almost 9months is against the constitution.
The plea has criticised the governor for “mechanically accepting” the decision of the chief minister to dissolve the assembly which has “infringed” the basic structure of the Constitution.
The plea also put allegations Rao to be superstitious and a believer in astrology and numerology and hence the decision to dissolve the state assembly and the date of on which it was done was all “based on superstition”.
The petition read “Rao is so superstitious that he thinks that number 6 is good luck to him and, therefore, he convened the Cabinet meeting at 6 am on September 6, 2018; ministers woke up at wee hours to report for the Cabinet meeting at 6 am and the length of the meeting is also determined on numerological and astrological considerations”, quoted by NDTV.
With inputs from NDTV