Telangana High Court Asks Local Body Polls To Be Completed by September 30

Hyderabad: The Telangana high court on Wednesday (June 25) ordered the state elections commission to conduct gram panchayat polls across Telangana by September.

The directive has lifted the curtains on a long electoral battle to test the strength of the ruling Congress vis-a-vis the rival Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which made significant inroads in the last parliament elections with eight seats under its belt for the first time.

Though the elections to gram panchayats are held on non-party basis, they are politically significant because the contestants are identifiable by their party affiliations in a micro-setting.

Telangana will also see a by-election to Jubilee Hills assembly constituency around the same time due to the death of incumbent BRS MLA Maganti Gopinath. The twin elections will likely extend to the Mandal and Zilla Parishad territorial constituencies, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and a dozen other municipal corporations and over 120 municipalities in December this year or January 2026.

Why were the polls delayed?

The court order ends the 17-month long suspense on elected bodies in 12,769 gram panchayats as polls were not conducted for them after the term of the previous sarpanches and ward members expired on February 1 last year.

The Congress government in Telangana, which came to power less than two months prior to that, had been dragging its feet to conduct the polls as it was looking for a favourable time in the midst of multiple challenges owing to financial constraints.

The party was keen to rehabilitate its grassroots cadre with village-level posts to consolidate its position in the assembly elections against the robust presence of the previous BRS regime in local bodies. It was all the more important for Congress to rebuild its base in villages, where its cadre had deserted the party for greener pastures in the ten years of exile after losing power at the centre.

According to Gudur Laxmi Narasimha Reddy, state president of Telangana Sarpanches Association, nearly 9,000 of the 12,769 gram panchayats had sarpanches belonging to the BRS, while the number of ward members of the party rain into several thousands.

Notwithstanding the shift in loyalties after Congress's win in the assembly elections, financial constraints created a dicey situation for the party to face local body polls. Some of them were attributed to its severe financial crunch to meet election promises, mainly crop loan waiver and investment support for agriculture, which ran into thousands of crores.

The implementation of both the schemes invited grumbling from beneficiaries, who claimed they were underpaid or left out entirely. However, chief minister A. Revanth Reddy frequently harped on the government's ability to meet the salary bill of staff on the first of every month despite the huge payout to the schemes and other welfare measures.

In this context, the Congress was firm on not leaving any space to either the BRS or the BJP by making a big show of achievements –  like the creation of hundreds of jobs and direct benefit transfers – at well-attended public meetings. 

The Telangana Congress Committee president B. Mahesh Kumar Goud told The Wire that the party was fully geared to face the elections. The government will take a view on the schedule after considering implementation of its reservation policy.

The Congress government in Telangana has passed a Bill in both Houses of legislature extending reservations to the backward classes (BCs) in local bodies, employment and education up to 42% and sent it to the Union government for presidential assent. The quota surpasses the statutory 50% cap on reservations which requires a Constitutional amendment. The legislation  has received no response from the Union government yet.

Goud justified delay in elections to gram panchayats on account of the parliamentary elections in May last year and the process set in motion for the implementation of its new reservation policy, which was an election promise of the Congress.

What did the court say?

Delivering an eight-page judgement fixing a deadline for the elections, Justice T. Madhavi Devi of the Telangana high court questioned the failure of the state government and the state Election Commission to conduct elections to rural local bodies in the last 17 months.

After hearing the parties to the suit, the court allotted three months for the completion of the process, including 30 days for delimitation of wards according to reservations and 60 days to conduct polls. The case came up on a batch of writ petitions filed by former sarpanches.

The petitioners had complained that the administration of panchayats was handed over to special officers after the sarpanches were eased out of their responsibilities. This went against the Constitution and the state panchayat raj laws. The officials could not attend to the routine duties of panchayats as they were busy with their own assigned jobs.

The sarpanches also said that they had carried out developmental works in villages with their own funds on assurance by the government that the money would be reimbursed from the Fifteenth Finance Commission allotment to the state. But they were not compensated as the Union government has held the release of about Rs 1,500 crore due to the state government as per commission recommendations for 2024-25 in the absence of elected bodies to panchayats.

The additional advocate general Imran Khan, appearing for the government, said the elections were delayed due to fixing reservations for BCs. The completion of the process may take another month.

Meanwhile, the counsel for the state election commission G. Vidyasagar sought two months to launch the election process after the government gave the go ahead for polls. He said it was the sole responsibility of the government to fix reservations.

Ths sarpanches association president Laxmi Narasimha Reddy while talking to The Wire highlighted that the sanitation and drinking water supply was badly affected in villages after the exit of sarpanches from office. He said the government deliberately delayed polls because it had to clear bills of sarpanches amounting to Rs 1,200 crore. "If the funds were released, they would go to the BRS sarpanches and they would use it to fight elections."

Reddy also said that the former sarpanches have gone through mental agony because of the delay in clearing bills. In fact, it was Reddy's pre-election promise as the party's state chief that the Congress would release funds on coming to power. The delay resulted in B.B. Rajpally village sarpanch Dasari Shankaraiah's death by suicide in Gollapalli mandal of Jagtial district recently, Laxmi Narasimha Reddy added.

The sarpanch body president reminded that the sarpanches had worked irrespective of their party affiliations. Only those who were efficient and commanded respect of village communities for their integrity were elected to the post. But it was strange that the Congress attributed motives to them. The bills raised by sarpanches in a particular regime and kept pending for various reasons were cleared by subsequent governments in routine course if there was a transfer of power. However, the Congress took a vindictive stand.

"In five years of our term, we borrowed loans, sold our properties and mortgaged jewellery to raise money for development of villages. We vied with each other to ground the works and earn goodwill from people. All this has defied trust of the government", he remarked.

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