Hyderabad: A PIL submitted by the NGO Good Gover-nance said that not conducting the GHMC was illegal, arbitrary and unconstitutional.

Mr Sivaraju Srinivas, counsel for the petitioner, submitted that Sections 4 to 7 of the GHMC Act made it clear that the Corpo-ration was to function and discharge its duties only through democratically elected members with a fixed tenure of five years.

He told the court that the elected body of the corporation had completed its five-year term on December 3, 2014, and the state government had appointed a special officer to the corporation for a period of six months with effect from December 4, 2014, under Section 70 G of the GHMC Act.


Advocate-general of Telangana K. Ramak-rishna Reddy submitted that the government required some more time to hold the elections and urged the court to grant time to file a counter affidavit explaining the reasons for the delay.

Reacting to the submissions, Justice Sengupta said that the Constitution mandated to hold elections to a civic body immediately after expiry of term of an elected body. Any violations in this regard amounted to defrauding the Const-itution, the bench observed. The bench granted a week to them to file their affidavits.