Telangana govt approaching GHMC elections with lack of vision, plan: Congress' Marri Shashidhar Reddy

Congress leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy on Saturday said that the Telangana government is approaching the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections with lack of vision and a plan.

Speaking to ANI, Reddy said, "The manner in which the Telangana State Government is approaching the GHMC elections, it lacks a vision and a plan. The administration proved itself incompetent and unprepared. Elections to GHMC are due before February 2021. It was stated last year when the Telangana Municipalities bill was enacted that there would be a new GHMC Act. Nothing has been done so far."

"During the monsoon session last month, the present act was amended but election-related issues were not touched. Now it is being said a new act will replace the existing GHMC act. We had pointed out that the reservation of wards carried out last time in 2015 was fixed to suit the ruling TRS party. SC and ST and Women reservations, which had to be done on the basis of the 2011 census, was faulty and done arbitrarily. Ward-wise BC enumeration was tailored to suit the interest of the ruling party and hence the reservations done on its basis was also wrong," he said.

"We had demanded that this time we will follow up on the process of reservations meticulously based on the experience last time. We asked for information about the enumeration block-wise details of the wards delimited last time but the GHMC did not share this information. Now either by an amendment or a new act, they appear to be keen to continue the same reservations, which were wrong, in the first place. We condemn this and demand that reservations be done in a fair manner," he added.

"After the bifurcation of the State, elections to GHMC were due in November 2014. In August 2014 the State government carried out the Samagra Kutumba Survey - Comprehensive Household Survey, all over the state. This was utilised to map the voters, especially in the GHMC area, where TRS fared very badly winning only 3 out of 24 assembly seats," he said.

"We don't think that the present Dharani survey being carried out just before the GHMC elections is a coincidence. What normally could take about a year, is being condensed into a short time. Suspicion is that seems to have a hidden agenda to map the voters once again. Apart from many empty promises. TRS seems to be deeply concerned about the anti-incumbency factor this time at the ward level due to neglect of public issues and indulgence in corruption by the Corporator's and MLAs, and all these attempts are aimed for damage control," he added.

(ANI)

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