Telangana govt. seeks five months to hold municipal elections

The Telangana government on Tuesday sought the High Court five months time to hold municipal elections. Meanwhile, term of elected members to 53 municipalities and three municipal corporations will end on July 2, 2019.

Arvind Kumar, principal secretary of state's municipal administration department filed an affidavit in a response to court's order which asked the government's stand on holding civic body elections.

Earlier, the court asked the government to submit a report on holding the municipal elections in the state while dealing with the three petitions filed against the government that the state is not taking necessary steps like delimitation of wards and finalisation of reservations to hold elections.

Arvind in the affidavit told the court that new municipalities and merge the existing gram panchayats into the municipalities will take time. He said that the state has constituted 68 new municipalities, duly upgrading 173 gram panchayats and merging another 131 gram panchayats into the adjoining 42 municipalities and municipal corporations.

As the process of fixing the ward strength, publication of ward-wise electoral rolls, final publication of ward-wise electoral rolls after taking objections, finalization of seats of persons hailing from SC, ST, BC takes time, Kumar sought 151 days to hold elections to all municipalities and municipal corporations.