Naidu sought to apprise the ECI that the YSRCP government in Andhra Pradesh was allegedly mounting huge pressure on its election machinery,
Chandrababu Naidu after meeting the CEC in Delhi. (Supplied)
TDP chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu on Monday, 28 August, approached the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) in New Delhi on the alleged large-scale irregularities in the voters’ list in Andhra Pradesh and the blatant violation of the poll panel’s guidelines.
In an 11-page letter submitted personally to the CEC, Naidu sought to bring to the notice of the poll panel that the ruling dispensation in the state was allegedly mounting huge political pressure on its election machinery, which was apparently not being allowed to function independently.
Pointing out various violations in the summary revision of the electoral rolls, the TDP supremo made an appeal to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to initiate necessary steps to conduct free and fair elections to the Assembly next year.
Met Chief Election Commissioner of India, Sri @rajivkumarec Ji at his office in New Delhi today. Brought to his attention several violations of ECI’s instructions and misuse of Electoral machinery by the incumbent YSRCP Govt, especially the addition of bogus votes and deletion of… pic.twitter.com/SJ0CLV1huY
— N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) August 28, 2023
The TDP has made several representations to the ECI with regard to the bypolls to the Tirupati Lok Sabha seat and in the elections held for the Legislative Council on various issues including revision of electoral rolls, Naidu said in the letter.
He added that the poll panel had attended to only certain issues and was acting slow on several other matters. This delay, he felt, was due to the extraordinary political pressure from the YSRCP, which is in power in the state.
He said he brought to the notice of the state’s chief election officer (CEO) that thousands of false cases had been foisted in the past four years on political leaders of rival parties staging peaceful demonstrations in a democratic way.
The administrative machinery has been silenced with the registering of cases, transfers, and the filing of Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) inquiries, he claimed in the letter.
The former chief minister said that the ruling dispensation in Andhra Pradesh had set up almost a parallel election machinery in the form of grama or ward sachivalayams (secretariats), subverting the polling staff and bypassing the ECI’s instructions.
He thus sought the intervention of the ECI to strengthen the constitutional machinery in the state and ensure their accountability to the poll panel to uphold democratic values.
Stating that the local body elections held in 2020-21 were almost unanimous in results because of political and muscle power along with brutal police force, Naidu said that when some candidates ventured out to file their nominations, they were either abducted or were forcibly shifted to unknown places from the premises of the respective returning officers.
The officials were forced not to issue necessary certificates to the contesting candidates, he added.
Coming to the Legislative Council polls, he said that some district-level officers were vying with one another to reject nominations on flimsy and unlawful grounds.
The state election commissioner (SEC), who dared to inform this modus operandi to the Centre, had to seek Central security for his family, the TDP supremo mentioned in the letter.
The SEC, an IAS officer of the rank of the special chief secretary, was hounded, humiliated, and publicly abused in filthy language, with Cabinet ministers taking the lead, a seriously concerned Naidu said in the letter.
This act of intimidation towards such a senior officer pushed the whole official machinery into submission, he claimed.
Regretting that all the institutions were terrorised and made to submit to the ruling party, which was abusing the democratic process, Naidu said he felt that the whole administrative process was totally paralysed.
The fundamental rights of the citizens were abrogated while a “volunteer” system — created with 2.6 lakh people, comprising YSRCP activists — was made to carry out political work, he added.
The volunteers’ door-to-door survey was not complete yet, and political parties were not provided with the weekly reports in various constituencies, the TDP supremo said, pointing out the news reports almost on a daily basis that hundreds of voters were registered with a single common address and with zero house numbers.
The deletions were either suo motu or through Form-7 applications without following due process, Chandrababu told the poll panel.
He added that it was thus generally perceived that the upcoming elections in 2024 would be fought in an atmosphere of unprecedented violence, with prominence on money and muscle power with the sole aim of denying voting rights to the eligible electorate.
Naidu appealed to the ECI to treat Andhra Pradesh as the most sensitive state and provide special monitoring mechanism. The TDP supremo also urged the poll panel to ensure that every eligible voter was included in the electoral rolls.
He also wanted teachers and other departmental staff to be drafted for poll duty and asked the ECI officials to make frequent visits to the state to assess the situation.
Naidu also appealed to the poll panel to constitute a high-power committee to regularly monitor the situation and suggest remedial measures.
Making it clear that the TDP, since its inception, strictly followed the poll panel guidelines in the interest of democracy, he felt that the state is facing an awful situation now and if this is not checked it will lead to autocratic rule.
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