Odisha Moves Supreme Court Against Andhra Pradesh’s Kotia Panchayat Poll Notification
The Odisha government has moved the Supreme Court against Andhra Pradesh’s October 10 notification for panchayat elections in three disputed Kotia villages in Koraput district, arguing it breaks the court’s 2006 order to maintain status quo in the border dispute. The Koraput collector filed the petition naming Andhra Pradesh’s state election commissioner and other officials.
Odisha and Andhra Pradesh have both claimed 21 of the 28 villages of the Kotia cluster in Koraput district since 1968, when Odisha first challenged Andhra Pradesh’s claim before the Supreme Court. On March 30, 2006, the court ruled it lacked jurisdiction over an inter-state boundary, which only Parliament can resolve, and it imposed a permanent injunction directing both states to maintain the status quo in the area, per a December 2, 1968 order.
Andhra Pradesh’s October 10 notification covers zilla parishad and panchayat samiti elections in three Kotia villages: Phagunasineri, Ganjeipadar and Phatusineri. Scroll.in reported, citing PTI, that Odisha’s Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Suresh Pujari said the notification violated the Supreme Court’s status quo order.
What the petition says
The Koraput district collector filed the petition on Odisha’s behalf, naming Andhra Pradesh’s state election commissioner and the concerned district collector as respondents. The petition asks the Supreme Court to stop the panchayat elections in the three named villages, on the ground that they fall within territory the court has already told both states to leave unchanged.
A dispute that keeps returning to court
This is not the first time an Andhra Pradesh election notification in Kotia has ended up before the Supreme Court. Andhra Pradesh held panchayat polls in the disputed villages in 2021 despite Odisha’s objections, and Odisha filed a contempt petition over that election. At a November 26, 2021 hearing before Justices A M Khanwilkar and C T Ravikumar, Odisha’s counsel told the court that the two states’ chief ministers had met on November 9, 2021, and agreed to set up a committee to look into the dispute, according to Verdictum. The bench said it would have to proceed with the contempt case if no settlement was reached, and deferred the matter to January 2022. That contempt petition remains pending, so the new petition adds a second, parallel proceeding over the same villages.
Why Kotia’s politics never settles
Part of why the dispute persists is that Kotia residents are not forced to pick a side. For last year’s elections, 5,502 voters across the 21 contested villages, including 2,913 women, held cards making them eligible to vote in both Odisha’s and Andhra Pradesh’s polls, from the panchayat level up to the Lok Sabha, The South First reported. Odisha had nine polling stations in the area that year and Andhra Pradesh had three.
Residents hold Aadhaar and ration cards from both states and draw benefits from both governments, with Odisha funding hospitals, roads, bridges and police stations in the area and Andhra Pradesh offering social security schemes such as old-age pensions. As one villager, Gamel Chinmoyee, put it: “We vote in both states because we benefit from the schemes of both.”
Political reaction in Odisha
Naveen Patnaik, Leader of the Opposition in Odisha, wrote to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi alleging that the state government had taken a “soft approach” to the notification because of the NDA’s dependence on the Telugu Desam Party. Andhra Pradesh is governed by a TDP-led alliance that includes the BJP, and the TDP is also a part of the NDA at the Centre.
Pujari rejected the suggestion that the state government was going easy on Andhra Pradesh, saying the notification itself was the violation the government was now contesting in court, per Scroll.in’s report.
What happens next
No hearing date for the new petition had been reported at the time of writing. The challenge arrives against a wider deadline: Andhra Pradesh’s state election commissioner, Anil Chandra Punetha, announced on October 14 that polling for Zilla Parishad and Mandal Parishad seats across the state would be held on November 3, with results due November 5, according to Republic World.
Odisha’s 2022 contempt petition over the 2021 election remains pending before the court, meaning the Kotia dispute now has two separate, unresolved proceedings running in parallel, alongside an election that, as in previous cycles, Kotia’s residents are likely to simply vote in anyway.
Leave a Reply