TRS government should clarify whether polls would be held to existing 150 wards of GHMC or more: Telangana Congress

HYDERABAD: The Congress has demanded that the TRS government should first clarify whether it would go to polls to the existing 150 wards in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) or increase their numbers before elections.
Telangana Congress election coordination committee meeting held in Hyderabad under the chairmanship of Marri Shashidhar Reddy on Wednesday said the government should come clear on whether it would go for fresh delimitation of wards or go to the polls with the one done earlier.
Shashidhar Reddy said the state government should notify the reservations of SC, ST and BC wards well in advance, and not hours before the election notification is issued, as was done in 2016. In the past, a lot of discrepancies were in the enumeration of BC voters as the data was manipulated to make the 150 wards tailor-made for the ruling party, he alleged.
“The process of reservation of wards was done unscientifically during the last election. It was done to suit the political needs of the ruling party. At least 15-day time should be given for objections and suggestions on reservation of wards, before the quota is notified,” Shashidhar Reddy said.
The Congress will take a decision on opting for ballot box or EVM polls to GHMC based on the feedback from the state election commission on the pros and cons of Covid-19 impact on ballot and EVM system.
“We will seek the guidelines issued by Election Commission of India for conduct of polls to Bihar assembly amidst Covid-19 pandemic. The commission should convene an all-party meeting and ensure that not more than 500 voters are there in each polling booth,” Shashidhar Reddy said.
“In 2015 we had focused on the deletion of lakhs of voters which was stayed with the intervention of the Election Commission of India. 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,” Shashidhar Reddy said.
The meeting discussed the ongoing special summary revision of electoral rolls with reference to January 1, 2021 as the cut-off date and said there were some irregularities in it. It was decided to take it up with the chief electoral officer Shashank Goel soon.