Andhra FM slams SEC for postponing local body polls

Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister Buggana Rajendranath on Saturday slammed State Election Commissioner (SEC) Ramesh Kumar for postponing the local body elections and called the decision undemocratic.

He said the SEC is doing false propaganda despite being on a Constitutional post.

Addressing media here, Rajendranath asked: "Did the Election Commissioner hold any official review of corona effect in the state? Without doing so, why did he postpone the local body elections? Did he consult any officers from the Medical and Health Department?"

"The SEC, in his letter to Union Home Secretary, wrote that the Chief Minister ordered ministers to win most of the seats, otherwise they will lose their ministerial berths. How can he make such allegations and what evidences did he have for that," he asked.

"How can he allege that the ruling party is thinking to win 70 per cent of seats? He wrote the letter in which he made allegations against Collectors and SPs. What evidence he has to write so? That letter seems to have been written by a politician but not by a bureaucrat," he said.

The Finance Minister said that every political party wants absolute victory in any election. Even TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu also called on his party's leaders to get 100 per cent victory.

He said the SEC wrote that the ruling party is trying for unanimous victories. TDP won 99 seats unanimously. Other parties have won more than 40 seats unanimously. "Then where is the question of oppression by the ruling party," he asked.

"We request Ramesh Kumar not to politicise his constitutional position. Why Kumar is not clarifying whether he himself wrote the letter to Union Home Secretary or not? Why he did not ask the State Government first about his security," he asked.