Telangana High Court refuses to issue orders on GHMC ward delimitation

Telangana HC declined to grant interim relief in petitions challenging GHMC ward delimitation, citing the advanced stage of the process and constitutional limits on judicial intervention in municipal election matters

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Monday declined to grant interim relief in a batch of writ petitions challenging the recent delimitation and merger of new wards with existing wards of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).

Justice B Vijaysen Reddy, who heard nearly 80 writ petitions mentioned through a lunch motion, refused to pass any immediate orders in favour of the petitioners and kept the matters pending for further consideration.

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Earlier, a Single Judge Bench had directed the State government to upload ward-wise population data and maps in the public domain within 24 hours, granting liberty to the original writ petitioners to submit additional objections within two days thereafter. That direction was later carried in appeal, where a Division Bench modified the order, limiting the benefit of the directions only to the original writ petitioners.

At the hearing, Advocate General A Sudershan Reddy raised a preliminary objection on the maintainability of the writ petitions. He contended that judicial interference at this stage was barred by Article 243ZG, which restricts court intervention in matters relating to municipal elections, including delimitation.

Appearing for the petitioners and leading the batch, Senior Counsel L Ravi Chander argued that recent decisions of the Supreme Court of India had recognised limited judicial review even in delimitation-related disputes. He submitted that an absolute bar would leave citizens without any effective forum to challenge arbitrary executive action. He further contended that the seven-day period prescribed under the rules for raising objections was directory and not mandatory.

Senior Counsel J Prabhakar also submitted that the State had preferred appeals only in two writ petitions, while similar interim orders passed in other connected matters continued to remain in force.

Responding to these submissions, the Advocate General informed the court that more than 5,000 objections had been received and duly examined in accordance with the statutory framework. He stated that the entire procedure contemplated under the relevant rules had been completed and that the final report had already been forwarded to the Government for approval. Entertaining further writ petitions at this stage, he cautioned, could trigger a flood of litigation and disrupt the electoral process.

After hearing the parties at length, Justice Vijaysen observed that the time prescribed for filing objections had already expired and that a substantial number of objections had been considered by the authorities. Taking note of the submission that the delimitation exercise had reached its final stage and was awaiting government approval, the court held that the balance of convenience favoured the respondents. Accordingly, the court declined to grant interim relief but kept the writ petitions pending for adjudication on merits at a later stage.