High No. of 'unanimous' polls bad: Andhra Pradesh Election Commissioner

Nellore: State Election Commissioner (SEC) N Ramesh Kumar clarified that he was not against unanimous elections, but it would be a failure on the part of administration if the number goes beyond the permissible level. He visited the district on Thursday and interacted with the officials on arrangements for the panchayat raj polls.

Addressing the media later, Ramesh Kumar said there was no concept of unanimous election in Assembly and Lok Sabha polls. "There is no objection for unanimous polls, but a large number of such elections is not desirable," he said and added that the trend of unanimous polls in Kavali division in Nellore district which was 20 per cent in the past was not coming down.

He opined that there was no need to overly propagate the concept of 'unity in diversity' among rural people as they were fully aware of it. They compete in healthy spirit during polls based on the local issues and unite afterward, he said. He asserted that the commission would conduct the polls as per the Constitution whether the it is respected or not.

The SEC said Covid situation in the state was under control compared to 1,200 cases a day last year, which prompted him to hold the polls. He felt herd immunity had developed among the state population adding this was the right time for elections.

Ramesh Kumar observed that elections were being held not only in Andhra Pradesh but at various parts of the country. Polls were conducted in Kerala, Telangana and Bihar while Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam, West Bengal and Puducherry were getting ready for the polls shortly, he said and asked what was wrong with organising polls when the pandemic situation gave some respite.

Earlier, the SEC held a review with senior officials on the poll process where he expressed his happiness over readiness of employees to cooperate with polling process.

District collector K V N Chakradhar Babu said that they were preparing the ground for conducting polls in 941-gram panchayats in the district under Kavali, Atmakur, Gudur/Naidupet, and Nellore revenue divisions in four phases from February 9. Polling staff were trained and 24,643 polling personnel were participating in all four phases.

Guntur range DIG Trivikram Varma, additional IG Sanjay, election observer Basant Kumar, joint collectors N Prabhakar Reddy, M N Harendira Prasad, Gudur sub collector R Gopala Krishna, SP Bhaskar Bhushan and others were present.