(Image source from: Tstimes.com)

Congress Is Looking For Withdrawal Of Ordinance To Amend State Panchayat Raj Act:- Telangana Government announced about the amendment in PR Act which is limiting the reservations for backward classes and scheduled tribes. The reduction of reservation is going to be 50% of maximum. This is to proceed with conducting the Panchayat Raj elections and the amendment of PR Act was officially put into place by Governor, E S L Narasimhan.

The President of Telangana Congress Uttam Kumar Reddy, on Tuesday asked the Telangana Government to withdrawal the amended rule of reservations. Reddy penned in the letter to Telangana Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao, must implement the High Court order on conducting caste-wise enumeration of BCs in the state along with a socio-economic survey, before the polls are conducted.

The Hyderabad High court instructed Telangana Government to conduct elections of for the members of gram panchayats and the offices of the sa rpanch in the gram panchayats within three months from 11th October.

"The Congress party disagrees with your government's ordinance reducing the BC reservation quota on the pretext of a Supreme Court verdict. The entire BC community of Telangana is agitated about reducing the reservations for BCs in Sarpanch and local body elections. The Congress party categorically states that reservations for BCs in local body elections must be commensurate with the population percentage of BCs in Telangana," the TPCC chief said in his open letter.

"Nearly 22 lakh eligible voters were missing from the electoral rolls and Chief Electoral Officer Dr. Rajat Kumar has admitted the same. As per the schedule for summary revision of electoral rolls announced by the Election Commission of India, the Integrated Draft Electoral Rolls will be published on December 26; Claims and Objections will be received from December 26 to January 25. Therefore, we feel that there is no point in holding the Panchayat Raj elections without waiting for revised electoral rolls. After all, elections are meant for people to elect their representative and when several lakh citizens are being deprived of their voting right, it surely is a mockery of democracy by the ruling government," Uttam said.

By Ramya