Mogili Mahesh v. The State Of Telangana And 2

THE HONOURABLE SRI JUSTICE P. NAVEEN RAO WRIT PETITOIN No.15588 of 2019 ORDER:

Heard the learned counsel for the petitioner and the learned counsel for the respondents.

2. The petitioner claims that he belongs to Scheduled Tribe (Yerukala) community and his house comes in ward No.2 of Vemulawada Municipality. According to him, in Ward No.2 a large number of Scheduled Tribe community of Yerukala caste people are living as compared to all other wards in the said municipality. Therefore, Ward No.2 should be reserved to ST Community. The petitioner now alleges that some of the voters of this ward are shifted and highest number of voters shown in Ward No.21. By virtue of this, the possibility of reserving Ward No.2 in favor of ST community is diminished.

3. According to learned standing counsel as per Section 11 of the Telangana Municipalities Act, 1965, the voters' list drawn by the Election Commission of India alone is required to be adopted by the Municipality and the Municipality has no competence to change the voters' list. He would further submit that the municipalities are not concerned with identification of social status of the voters and such exercise is taken up by Government alone and if the petitioner has any grievance on the social status of any person and reservations, he must file an application to the Government.

4. Having regard to the said submissions, liberty is granted to the petitioner to make application to the Government highlighting the social status of the voters and on such application being made, the Principal Secretary to the Government shall consider the same objectively, and communicate his decision to the petitioner. If Principal Secretary is in agreement with the contentions urged by the petitioner, he shall accordingly instruct the municipality to effect necessary changes in the voters list with reference to social status.

5. Having regard to the same, the relief sought for in this Writ Petition cannot be granted. Accordingly, the Writ Petition is dismissed subject to liberty granted to the petitioner as above. No order as to costs. Miscellaneous petitions, if any pending, shall stand dismissed.

__________________ P. NAVEEN RAO, J July 25, 2019 KTL`