An election is lost at the nomination desk. Andhra's commission must show every candidate got there

Andhra Pradesh’s local body elections were meant to settle who runs its towns and villages. They are now in danger of settling something worse: that in the state’s politics, the right to stand for office belongs to whoever controls the street outside the nomination centre.

The first day of nominations, on Friday, set the tone. In Punganur, four SUVs in the convoy of YSRCP MP P V Midhun Reddy were flipped over and cars were burnt. In Rayachoti, vehicles near the YSRCP office were set alight. The two parties tell opposite stories. The YSRCP says Telugu Desam Party workers attacked its candidates while police watched. The police say the MP’s convoy of more than 10 vehicles caused the trouble, and the TDP says its town president was assaulted.

By Sunday, when nominations closed, the allegations had grown. YSRCP chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy says his candidates could not file papers at all in eight places, had them torn up in eight more, and that in his home town of Pulivendula only 19 nominations were filed for 36 wards. He has asked Governor S Abdul Nazeer for central forces and cameras in every booth.

The fair objection

These are a losing party’s claims, and they should be treated as claims. Andhra politics has a long memory: when the YSRCP held power, the TDP made much the same complaints about local polls. A party out of office has every reason to cry foul, and none of the YSRCP’s specific charges has yet been tested.

That is precisely why the State Election Commission cannot stay silent. A commission that answers nothing leaves voters with two partisan versions and no referee. And an election in which a candidate cannot reach the nomination desk is decided before polling day, whoever is telling the truth.

What the commission should do

First, it should publish, ward by ward, every nomination filed, rejected or withdrawn in the urban polls, with the reason for each rejection. That one list would show quickly whether the opposition’s complaints are widespread or confined to a few towns.

Second, where a candidate can show that he or she was physically stopped from filing, the commission should use its power to extend or reopen nominations in that ward, even if it means shifting the poll there by a few days.

Third, any ward won unopposed in the towns named in complaints, such as Pulivendula, Punganur, Rayachoti and Tirupati, should be examined before the result is declared. An unopposed win is a legitimate result only when nobody wanted to stand, not when nobody was let through the gate.

Fourth, the police officers in charge at nomination centres where violence broke out should be identified and, where they failed to act, moved before polling day. Video recordings from those centres should be kept and made available to the courts.

Finally, the rural rounds still lie ahead. Mandal and zilla parishad nominations, and three phases of gram panchayat polls ending on 2 December, will test the same system in thousands of villages. If the urban round passes without an answer, every party will draw the obvious lesson for the next one.

Voting in 100 urban bodies is on 28 October. The commission has nine days to show that the choice on the ballot is the voters’ to make.

The reporting behind this view

• 8places where the YSRCP says its candidates could not file nominations at all
• 19 for 36nominations the YSRCP says were filed for Pulivendula's 36 wards
• 28 Octpolling day for 100 urban local bodies; results on 30 October