Kanna demands fresh schedule for elections to local bodies

Tirupati: BJP State president Kanna Lakshminarayana demanded that the State Election Commission (SEC) cancel the election process held so far to announce a fresh election schedule for local bodies.

Welcoming the SEC N Ramesh Kumar deferring elections to the local bodies by six weeks, he came down heavily on Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy and his Ministers attacking SEC and also making personal remarks against him.

"Even Governor was not spared from the attack,'' he said condemning the YSRCP on the local body election issue.

Speaking to the media here on Monday, the BJP chief who was here to meet district party leaders and activists who suffered attacks allegedly from YSRCP activists during filing of nominations for contesting the local bodies elections including municipal, MPTC and ZPTC to bolster their morale, said that the ruling party unleashed a reign of terror all over the State to prevent candidates from Opposition parties filing nomination for the local bodies election and lamented that he had not seen such a massive scale of violence in his 46-year political life.

Strongly demanding the elections to be conducted afresh under the Election Commission of India, he wanted deployment of Central paramilitary forces to ensure impartial and peaceful elections to the local bodies.

Turning his ire on police, he said that in many districts like Chittoor, they were found used by the ruling party for threatening, foisting false cases and siding with YSRCP goons in attacking the candidates belonging to opposition parties, snatching their nomination papers or tearing the papers so as to prevent them from contesting the elections.