Congress Asks SEC To Hold All Party Meet On The Issue For Upcoming GHMC Elections

Hyderabad, Sept.23 (Maxim News): The congress party today demanded the state election commission to hold an all-party meeting on the issue of holding upcoming GHMC elections.

Marri Shashidhar Reddy chaired a meeting of the TPCC Election Commission Coordination Committee this morning at Gandhi Bhavan. PCC president Uttam Kumar Reddy participated in it from Delhi via video conference. Besides senior leaders of the GHMC area including former PCC president V Hanumantha Rao, ex MP Konda Vishweshwar Reddy, presidents of Ranga Reddy and Sangareddy districts and others also participated as special invitees.

They discussed the ongoing special summary revision with reference to 1 January 2021 as the cut-off date and some glaring irregularities were pointed out. It was decided to take it up with the Chief Electoral Officer Dr Shashank Goel soon.

They also discussed about the letter written by the State Election Commission to all political parties to elicit their views on whether to conduct elections to GHMC on the basis of events or ballot paper because of Covid-19 situation.

It was decided to write to the State Election Commission seeking their views in the first place about the pro and cons of both the methods of conducting elections and also to seek information about the guidelines issued by the Election Commission of India for the assembly elections to be conducted in Bihar shortly. After their their inputs a considered view will be taken about the party’s stand on this.

It was pointed out by Shashidhar Reddy that the state government did not come out with any categorical statement about their intent to continue with the same number of 150 municipal wards for the coming GHMC elections. Further, if they come out with this, there government will also have to announce whether they will continue with the wards as per the delimitation done last time or if it is proposed to carry out fresh delimitation now.

The delimitation of one school walks or divisions was taken up on the basis of the 2011 population census. It was pointed out by Reddy that in Hyderabad Census data is gathered on the basis of 35 Census Wards, which are not the same as the GHMC wards for holding elections. There are wards number 1 to 23 on the Hyderabad site and 1 to 12 on the Secunderabad side. Further each of these wards comprise of enumeration blocks (EBs). EB-wise census data should be put in the public domain by GHMC. Similarly, GHMC should also put out the EB-wise break up each of the 150 wards (divisions) of GHMC with the details of SC and ST population.

In this manner the moment the delimitation process is completed, we will know which of the 150 wards should be ear marked for SC and ST reservation. The other category will be BC reservation. The number of BC voters are determined ward-wise after an enumeration is done on the filed, polling station-wise.

In the past a lot of discrepancies have been found in the enumeration of BC voters. Normally, the ruling party decided which of the wards have to be reserved for different categories and data is manipulated accordingly, to make the 150 wards tailor-made for the ruling party.

In 2015 we had focused on the large-scale illegal deletion of lakhs of voters, which were stayed with the intervention of the Election Commission of India over. It had led to the transfer of the then commissioner GHMC Somesh Kumar. This time the Congress party will carefully monitor this whole process of delimitation, enumeration of BC voters and reservations to prevent the government from making it unfairly advantageous to the ruling party. (Maxim News)

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