Writ petitions dismissed by court

By Our Legal Correspondent

HYDERABAD, JUNE 27. A Full Bench of the A. P. High Court, comprising the Chief Justice, Mr. Satyabrata Sinha, Mr. Justice B. Subhashan Reddy and Mr. Justice V. V. S. Rao, on Wednesday dismissed a batch of writ petitions challenging the action of the authorities in going ahead with the election process for panchayat bodies in the State. With this dismissal, the last legal hurdle for panchayat elections has been removed.

It may be recalled that several writ petitions were filed by the A.P. Sarpanches Association and others in the High Court on various grounds and they were referred to the Full Bench. After hearing arguments, the Bench reserved the cases for judgment. The A. P. Sarpanches Association complained to the court that various sections of the A.P. Panchayat Raj Act were not in conformity with the 73rd Constitutional amendment. The petitioners said that the shortcomings in the Act were detrimental to the functioning of the bodies. The Bench, speaking through the Chief Justice, made it clear that the court cannot ask the legislature to make a law or direct the Government to make a rule in the manner prescribed by it.

Dismissing the writ petition which complained that the enumeration of Backward Class (BC) votes was not done properly, the Bench recalled that the petitioners were party to the consent order passed by a Division Bench which had indicated the procedure to be adopted for arriving at the number of BC voters in the voter list. The Bench made it clear that the petitioners now cannot complain that the method adopted by the authorities was likely to be defective. The Bench took note of the fact that findings of a micro survey conducted earlier to ascertain socio- economic status of each household were used for this purpose and the random check system was satisfactory.

The action of the Government to rely upon the census figures of 1991 for the present election for ascertaining the population of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was upheld by the Bench. The court dismissed the writ petition seeking a direction to the authorities to conduct elections based upon the 2001 census figure.

The Bench dismissed the writ petition in which the petitioners sought implementation of the concept of categorisation of SCs on the lines of education and employment. The Bench said that the State Legislature made a law limiting the concept of categorisation to educational and employment fields only and the court cannot extend the benefit by way of judgment to the political arena.

The 30-page judgment recorded the dismissal of another writ petition which sought a direction to the Government to declare all the Thandas (hamlets occupied by the Lambada tribes people) independent villages. The Bench took note of various rules pertaining to declaration of village and panchayat. The Government had submitted to the court that the 47 villages were constituted recently and the declaration was made.

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Section  : Southern States
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