TDP president and former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday slammed the YCP Ministers, MLAs and party leaders for resorting to ‘intimidation and physical attacks’ in order to force the residents of grama panchayats to accept unanimous elections in the state.
Naidu said that the YCP leaders had a hidden agenda behind their so-called call for ‘unanimous elections’. But the TDP was giving a call for leaving the choice of electing the panchayat sarpanches to the villagers themselves so that efficient leaders would be elected for bringing real development in their villages. The Panchayat Raj Minister should be sacked for his unconstitutional remarks against the election process and the State Election Commission.
Addressing a press conference here, the TDP said that the YCP ministers and leaders were behaving like rowdies and hooligans with a view to getting their party activists elected in the panchayat polls in the name of ‘unanimous elections’. The general public should strongly oppose this considering the threat to the concept of local self-government. The YCP misused the idea of unanimous elections and used threats and physical attacks to illegally grab an alarming number of seats in the MPTC and ZPTC polls that were held in March last year.
Naidu showed videos of how the ruling party leaders and their henchmen resorted to the murder attempt on the TDP MLC and ex MLA in Macherla and how the nomination papers were snatched away forcefully from rival candidates. The YCP committed ‘murder of democracy’ in the MPTC, ZPTC elections. Only 270 out of 1,092 MPTCs were unanimous in 2014, which was just 2.67 per cent. But in 2020 March, over 2,248 out of 9,696 MPTCs were unanimous which was an unbelievable 23 per cent. Also, only one ZPTC out of 652 seats was unanimous in 2014 which was just 1.15 percent. Whereas, in 2020, over 125 out of 652 ZPTCs were unanimous which was a whopping 19 percent.
The TDP chief demanded the Chief Minister to explain whether their party won so many unanimous seats with the support of the election machinery and the police but not that of the public. The Kadapa district was witness to serious election offences where the YCP won 386 MPTCs unanimous in 2020 as against just 8 in 2014. The YCP resorted to a total of 2,274 election offences in March 2020, which included 1,085 threats and 341 inducements. In the past 20 months, the ruling party did not develop any facilities in the villages but its Ministers were now shamelessly urging for ‘unanimous elections’.