Congress banks on local body elections in Andhra

The elections are more than just a constitutional obligation for the party, which may face difficult political scenario in Assembly and Parliament polls early next year

The Congress government in Andhra Pradesh is gearing up to face the inevitable electoral battle due in April-May next year by deciding to hold local body elections from next month after dragging them for two years.

Wasting no time it has also started a massive reshuffle in the government machinery. On Wednesday, it transferred 40 IPS officers in almost all the crucial positions, the day chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy told a party meeting that elections would begin with gram panchayats and then with mandal and zilla parishads, the two tiers above it, followed by municipal elections between June and September. A reshuffle of IAS officers is also on the cards.

The local body elections are more than just a constitutional obligation for the Congress, which is expected to face the most difficult political scenario in the Assembly and Parliament elections early next year.

On the resource front, these elections will help get release of Finance Commission grants held up at the Centre for improving the infrastructure in villages and towns. On a more serious level, the elections will help create a grassroot network capable of mobilising people in their favour.

"During the Panchayat elections, people in the villages will split into multiple groups with loyalties centering around the candidates they support. Candidates with the same political affiliation fight with each other as the opportunity to make a political career comes only once in 5 years. This kind of a situation will make the relatively new political outfits and those with no strong grassroot level cadre vulnerable in retaining their support base," said R Satyanarayana, president, district unit of Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) of the neighbouring Medak district.

Political observers say the Congress is timing the local body elections for the exact purpose in a bid to minimise the electoral challenge from the newly-formed YSR Congress party in coastal Andhra and the TRS in Telangana.

The YSR Congress, which is a little over two years old, and the TRS have been weak compared with either the Congress or the Opposition Telugu Desam in terms of village level network of loyal cadre and leaders. Though the YSR Congress had won the majority seats in all the byelections held for the Assembly constituencies since its inception, it had, however, failed to put up a similar performance in agricultural cooperative elections held recently.

About 250,000 elected representatives will emerge out of the three-tier Panchayat raj elections and at least a quarter of this number in municipal polls.