Justice U. Durga Prasad of the High Court of Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday issued interim orders staying all further proceedings of the elections to the ZPTCs and MPTCs.
The verdict coming on the day of the last day of campaigning and just two days before the polling, scheduled to be held on April 8, has yet again placed the ball in the High Court. The Judge further posted the next hearing to April 15 asking the State Government to file a counter-affidavit.
The judgment comes after a bunch of writ petitions were filed Varla Ramaiah of the Telugu Desam Party, Veera Reddy of the Bharatiya Janata Party and V . Venugopala Rao of the Jana Sena Party seeking a stay on the elections. The petitioners contended that in accordance with a Supreme Court’s judgment, there should be a four-week period to enforce Model Code of Conduct between the announcement of election notification and the date of polling.
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State Election Commissioner Neelam Sawhney issued the election notification on April 1 and announced the election schedule.
The Judge observed that in case the State Government issued a fresh notification taking into consideration the Supreme Court judgment on the mandatory four-week period of Model Code of Conduct , the court would give appropriate orders then.
Giving his observation on the writ petition filed by Mr. Veera Reddy to give orders against the proposal of the government to continue the election process, which had been suspended since March 2020, the Judge said that the onus of conducting elections rested with the State Election Commission.
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The ruling YSRCP government said it would explore legal options.