Telangana HC Clears Jubilee Hills Society Polls, Orders Completion in 8 Weeks

The Telangana High Court has set aside an interim order that stayed elections to the Jubilee Hills Cooperative House Building Society Ltd in Hyderabad. The court directed election officials to resume the stalled electoral process and complete it expeditiously.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh and Justice GM Mohiuddin passed the directions on Tuesday. The ruling came as the bench allowed a batch of appeals moved by the Jubilee Hills society challenging an earlier interim order issued by a single judge.

The High Court instructed the State Cooperative Election Authority and election officers to restart the election process precisely from the stage at which it had been halted. The bench specified that the entire exercise should preferably be completed within eight weeks from the date of receipt of the judgment.

As part of the procedural directions, the court ordered that the votes of 270 members whose names were included in the voter slip must be polled separately and deposited into separate ballot boxes. Meanwhile, the votes of the remaining members appearing on the final voters list are to be collected and kept in a separate set.

The bench directed that the election results should be declared in accordance with the law, with both sets of ballot papers preserved separately following the count.

The court noted that once the results are declared, any aggrieved parties will be free to challenge the outcome through an election petition. Such challenges may be filed on various grounds, including whether the separately polled votes materially affected the outcome of the election.

Furthermore, the bench clarified that any subsequent election petition or statutory proceeding arising from the matter must be adjudicated independently on its own merits. The court emphasized that future proceedings should not be influenced by any observations made either in the single judge's interim order or in the division bench's judgment.