The Panchayat Raj Elections slated to be held in the month of July have been postponed indefinitely in the wake of a stay order issued by the AP High Court. A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Nisar Ahmed Kakru and Justice Vilas Afzulpurkar on Wednesday stayed the operation of GO 128 issued on June 6, 2011, fixing guidelines to provide 60.5 per cent reservations to various communities.

The bench was dealing with a petition by Mr M. Venkata Reddy of Nagulapally village, Mahbubnagar district, challenging the constitutional validity of the GO. The government had issued the GO by amending the 2006 rules pertaining to the reservations to various social groups in the panchayat raj local bodies. The orders of the High Court came as a relief for the ruling Congress and the Telugu Desam as neither was in a position to face the polls at this juncture. The Congress and the Telugu Desam had been apprehensive about the YSR Congress led by Mr Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy causing major damage in the polls to both the parties in the Seemandhra region and about the Telangana Rashtra Samiti doing the same in the Telangana region.

The indefinite postponement of the panchayati raj elections, an Ordinance to amend the AP Panchayat Raj Act, 1994 becomes necessary as there is no provision to fill the vacuum that will arise after July 21, the day the tenures of existing Zilla Parishads and Mandal Parishads expire. Accordingly the state government has pushed forward its proposal to bring in an Ordinance amending the AP Panchayat Raj Act, 1994, for appointing special officers/in-charges for the Zilla and Mandal Parishads to fill the vacuum that will be created after July 21. However, a similar provision is in existence for municipalities and gram panchayats.