High Court stays Mahamoodpatnam panchayat polls over faulty ST reservations

Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court on Thursday stayed the Mahamoodpatnam panchayat polls in Warangal district. It faulted the reservation of the sarpanch post and three ward seats for Scheduled Tribes (STs) in a village with only six ST voters.

Justice T. Madhavi Devi issued the order after finding that authorities had used the 2011 Census, instead of the updated 2025 voter list. The court observed that this undermined the validity of the reservation.

Mittagadupula Yakub filed an urgent lunch motion petition challenging the sarpanch seat’s allotment to an ST woman. His counsel, Ramesh Chilla, argued that Mahamoodpatnam has 576 registered voters. Among them, only six belong to the ST community.

The lawyer said the village includes 250 Scheduled Caste (SC) voters, 300 Backward Class (BC) voters, and over 20 from Other Castes (OC). Despite this, the sarpanch post and three ward seats went to STs. He also pointed out that officials had initially assigned the sarpanch post to an SC woman. They later changed it in favour of an ST candidate without explanation.

ST reservations challenged over updated voter data

The court stayed the elections after officials failed to act on complaints against the revised reservations. It adjourned the matter to December 29 for further hearing.

Justice Madhavi Devi also heard multiple petitions challenging reservations in other panchayats. These included concerns over BC quotas. She deferred those hearings to Friday.

Senior advocate G. Vidyasagar appeared for the State Election Commission. He argued that SC and ST reservations take priority under the Constitution. He said the government must allocate their quotas first, before considering BCs.

Petitioners disagreed. They said the state had not even met the 23% quota due to BCs. The bench noted that the issue of BC quotas is already pending before the Chief Justice’s bench. Therefore, it declined to issue further orders on that matter.

Justice Madhavi Devi said the court would review how far it can intervene in these petitions on Friday.