Nellore: Botcha Satyanarayana questions SEC's haste

Nellore: Municipal administration and urban development minister Botcha Satyanarayana said that it was unfortunate that the State Election Commissioner was pressing ahead with local body poll process in the state and asked what happens if the elections were postponed for two or three more months. He said the State Election Commission (SEC) was adopting 'confrontationist' attitude towards the state government "which won more than 150 seats".

Satyanarayana addressed the media here on Saturday after laying the foundation stone for the Gosha hospital along with the minister for water resources P Anil Kumar Yadav. He repeated the usual allegation of the state government and the ruling party leaders that opposition leader N Chandrababu Naidu had connived with State Election Commissioner Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar with an intention to 'dilute the democratic spirit' in the state.

Asking why Chandrababu had failed to conduct elections in 2018 though their term had expired, he said SEC Ramesh Kumar should know his responsibility along with the duties as he had been behaving like a politician. At the same time, he predicted that the opposition could get only 10 per cent of votes in the local elections polls.

"The opposition leader of the state is commenting against the government sitting at home. While the state is facing a critical situation due to COVID, the SEC is planning to conduct polls immediately. Nimmagadda is speaking to the officials like a political leader, not as a Commissioner. This is pathetic and I had never seen in my political career of around 30 years," said Minister Satyanarayana.

He said SEC Ramesh Kumar was now pointing fingers at the senior IAS officer Gopala Krishna Dwivedi who earlier served as the Chief Electoral Officer with utmost sincerity. He criticised that it was nothing but misusing constitutional bodies for personal reasons.

The minister said that even though they had requested the SEC to conduct polls earlier, he decided to stop polls citing Covid situation when there were only 50 cases. Now the situation is critical, and still the SEC is mandating the poll process in the state, he said.

He pointed out that the SEC had asked the state government to relieve some officers from election duties even before the release of the election notification. He wanted the commission to wait till further directions of the Supreme Court and asked why Ramesh Kumar had been rushing to conduct polls.

"Do you think that Chandrababu can get more than 10 per cent of votes in the polls even if you conduct a campaign for him? Now people are ready to banish him from the political arena. The opposition is resorting to stealing statues and attacking the structures just because of its inability to digest the popularity of the ruling party. Tekkali incident is a clear example where CCTV footage revealed activists of the TDP were involved in Nandi idol incident," he said. Minister for water resources P Anil Kumar and legislators were also present.