Pleas for reservations re-determination for panchayat elections posted before HC division bench

Justice T. Madhavi Devi of Telangana High Court on Tuesday (December 02) directed the Registry to place before the Division Bench a batch of six writ petitions seeking re-determination of reservations for different categories in some gram panchayats in the State. 

The different petitioners pointed out the strange situations of no persons belonging to specific communities like Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes being present in a village and still the posts of sarpanch and ward members being reserved for those communities. ‘By conducting elections to these villages in such circumstances, the very purpose of elections and the democratic values would be defeated,” the judge observed. 

Justice Madhavi Devi also noted that “any direction to reserve the said posts for any other class or category would affect the roster to be followed and it would have wide ramifications”. In the backdrop of the peculiar facts and circumstances cited in the batch of pleas, conducting elections in these villages would result in loss to exchequer with no purpose being served. 

In one of the pleas, the petitioner informed the bench that the post of sarpanch and ward members in Mahmoodpatnam gram panchayat in Kesamudram of Mahbubabad district for the SC. But there were no members from the SC in the village. In this backdrop, the election should be suspended, the petitioner urged. The panchayat election notification, with reservations for the SC and the ST as per 2011 census and for the Backward Classes based on SEEEPC-2024 (Socio-Economic, Education, Employment, Political and Caste survey), was issued.  

In the process, some villages (cited in the writ pleas) got reserved to some communities from which there is no population at all or the population was so low that no candidates even to contest the election. If elections are held, some of the posts are likely to remain vacant. In this background, the petitioners requested the court to conduct elections based on the current population and re-determine the reservations. 

The government counsel made it clear that the government can only consider the 2011 census for determining reservations for the SC and the ST and hence cannot consider the current population for fixing up the reservations. The judge directed the Registry to list the petitions on Wednesday.