A petition filed by Congress leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy has questioned the Election Commission on conducting the Telangana Assembly election without excluding some seven Mandals of Khammam district which were transferred to Andhra Pradesh in two Assembly segments.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice Thottathil B. Radhakrishnan and Justice V. Ramasubramanian had asked the center and Election commission to file affidavits explaining how the voters are allocated in the said constituencies.
The petition has challenged the decision of the EC to conduct elections without delimiting constituencies as this is illegal because the due process is through an amendment to the Delimitation of Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies Order.
Avinash Desai, counsel of Election commission said the voters in the seven mandals were merged in two constituencies in AP. However, the petition countered this decision and said that the EC had no power to merge the voters without following due process under the Delimitation Act.
The next hearing of the case has been scheduled on 10th October where the court has asked the EC and the center to explain the merger of votes.
Earlier, Mr. Reddy, chairman of TPCC, had moved SC with a plea to rectify the electoral roll in Telangana where there is a discrepancy in the name of 70 lakh voters and names of 30 lakh voters have been deleted which are said to have been moved to Andhra Pradesh. However, the names of those voters have not been added in the electoral rolls of AP.