Somesh Kumar a pro-KCR person, charges Marri Shashidhar Reddy

Hyderabad: Telangana BJP senior leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy termed the High Court verdict ordering the State Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar as good riddance.

Democracy will be the biggest gainer with this, he said.

Listing out how Somesh Kumar acted in an undemocratic manner and against the people's interest and sided with Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, he said that TRS could win only 3 out of 24 assembly constituencies in the 2014 election. With the elections to GHMC due in a few months, CM KCR engineered the Samagra Kutumba Survey in August 2014 with the primary objective of mapping the voters in these 24 constituencies. Then Somesh Kumar, who was the GHMC Commission along with CEO Telangana Bhanwarlal devised a pilot project NERPAP - National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme, to link the Aadhaar card with Voter ID which was approved by the Election Commission.

He said KCR called for a meeting in July 2015 and directed CEO Bhanwarlal, should only report to the Election Commission of India. This was in total violation of democratic norms. CM ordered the deletion of 15 lakh names in the GHMC area. Somesh Kumar turned out to be more loyal than the king and, under the garb of the Aadhaar linkage, straight away identified 30 lakh voters for deletion. He then set the process of illegal deletion underway, without serving notices, as required by law.

When this was brought to the notice of the Election Commission in October 2015, for the first time in the country, a 14-member high-level committee of officials was rushed to Hyderabad to enquire into my allegations. After detailed verification, "my allegations were proved right. On the basis of their report, Somesh Kumar was held guilty of gross irregularities." However, as a face-saving, Somesh Kumar was transferred from GHMC to the Tribal Welfare department. In the past when illegal deletions were resorted to, senior officers in UP were placed under suspension. As per the provisions of the Representation of People Act, "illegal deletion of names from the voters' list is punishable by imprisonment. Somesh Kumar got away lightly at that time, under the patronage of CM KCR," he alleged.

Even after being allotted to AP cadres, he managed to continue in Telangana based on an order of the Central Administrative Tribunal. Somesh Kumar was promoted as the State Chief Secretary and has throughout worked as an agent of the TRS. He has the dubious distinction of having attended a TRS party office inauguration programme along with CM KCR last year. His exit is very welcome.