Plea challenging trifurcation of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation: Telangana HC seeks response from Centre, state in 3 weeks

Through the GO, a unified GHMC of 2053 square kilometres (after merging the erstwhile GHMC with 27 peripheral municipal bodies in December 2025) was trifurcated into a truncated GHMC, Cyberabad Municipal Corporation, and Malkajgiri Municipal Corporation.

Petitioner’s claims

The petitioner, Daram Guruva Reddy, claimed that the GO was issued after a jurisdictional freeze on boundaries imposed by Circular No 1 issued by the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India on August 13, 2025. Reddy said the GO was also contrary to the provisions of the Census Act of 1948 and the Census Rules of 1990, especially Rule 8(iv), and was in violation of Articles 14, 254, 256, and 257 of the Constitution.

Rajkumar Gummi, the petitioner’s counsel, referred to the census notification of June 16, 2025, which declared the reference date for the 2027 census to be March 1, 2027, except for parts of Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. He also referred to another notification issued on January 7, 2026, noting that the Phase-1 house listing operations for census 2027 will take place between April 1, 2026, and September 30, 2026, and that the Phase-2 enumeration of population will take place in February 2027.

The counsel also submitted that, as per the census rules, the state government shall freeze the administrative boundaries of districts, tehsils, towns, etc., from the date intimated by the Census Commissioner, which shall not be earlier than the census reference date and till the completion of the census. He stated that the freezing date for any changes in boundaries, as per the census commissioner’s circular issued in accordance with census rules, was December 31, 2025.

He informed the court that 27 urban local bodies were merged into GHMC on December 3, 2025, to create a unified GHMC, and that on December 24, a delimitation exercise was conducted for the unified GHMC, creating 300 municipal wards. While this was within the freezing date, he said, the GO reorganising the unified GHMC into three municipal corporations was issued on February 11 and was contrary to the conditions mentioned in the census circular.

State and Centre’s stance

Advocate General A Sudershan Reddy, appearing for the state, submitted that the state was required to freeze the administrative boundaries from the date to be intimated by the census commissioner, which shall not be less than one year from the census reference date and till the completion of the census. Since the reference date was March 1, 2027, he pointed out that the state was required to freeze the boundaries on March 1, 2026.

B Narasimha Sharma, Additional Solicitor General of India, representing the Centre and the registrar general and census commissioner, referring to the Circular No.1 of August 13, 2025, submitted that the directors of census operations (DCOs) were required to send details of all jurisdictional changes between January 1, 2010, and June 30, 2025, by August 22, 2025, and report similar changes between July 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025, by January 10, 2026, to provide a complete picture of jurisdiction changes up to December 31, 2025.

Objecting to AG’s submissions, Gummi said that the freezing date would be intimated by the census commissioner, and in the present case, it was notified in August 2025 as December 31, 2025.

The matter was adjourned for further hearing on March 25.