Jagan asks Governor Nazeer for central forces and CCTV cameras in Andhra Pradesh civic polls

YSRCP president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Sunday asked Andhra Pradesh Governor S Abdul Nazeer to put central forces on the ground and CCTV cameras in every booth for the state’s local body elections, accusing the ruling TDP-led alliance of using the police to keep his party’s candidates out of the race.

The former chief minister handed the Governor a representation at Lok Bhavan listing what he said were attacks, seized nomination papers and police intimidation across the state during the nomination window for the urban local body polls, which has now closed.

He then told reporters at his Tadepalli office that the NDA coalition was “preventing opposition candidates from filing nominations for local body elections” because it feared defeat. “Denying people who wish to contest the opportunity to do so is a stain on democracy,” he said.

What Jagan alleges

According to the YSRCP, nominations could not be filed at all in eight places, and in eight others its candidates’ papers were torn up. In Pulivendula, his own home turf, only 19 nominations were filed for 36 wards, he said, alleging that police fired into the air and stones were thrown at candidates there. He called the firing unprecedented.

He said his party’s MPs Avinash Reddy, P V Midhun Reddy and M Gurumoorthy were mistreated at nomination centres, and that YSRCP workers were turned away even when they came in the group of four the rules allow, while TDP supporters gathered in crowds. He listed Kadapa, Punganur and Tirupati among the places where papers were seized or refused, vehicles attacked and supporters beaten, and said that on the final day candidates still could not file in towns including Tirupati, Kadapa, Rayachoti, Punganur, Darsi, Gurazala, Piduguralla, Badvel and Rajampet.

There was no immediate response from the TDP.

The referee under fire

Mr Reddy also turned on the State Election Commission. He called the present commissioner loyal to the TDP and questioned the practice of political authorities choosing who runs the polls. Under the former commissioner N Ramesh Kumar, whom he described as a staunch TDP supporter, the YSRCP had still won with a strike rate of more than 90 per cent, he said.

He complained that the schedule was announced a day after ward reservations were published, giving the opposition little time to prepare, that delimitation of wards had been drawn to favour the NDA, and that the government chose to hold the polls on an unrevised electoral roll even though, he said, the special intensive revision had found 46 lakh fake voters.

What comes next

Mr Reddy said the YSRCP would pursue legal remedies and told workers to keep fighting, warning that those responsible would be held to account.

The polls themselves will roll out over the next seven weeks. Voting in 100 urban local bodies is on 28 October, with results on 30 October. Mandal and zilla parishad territorial constituencies vote on 3 November and are counted on 5 November, and gram panchayats vote in three phases on 26 November, 29 November and 2 December, with results declared on each polling day.