YSRCP president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday is holding a meeting with state DGP Gautam Sawang to discuss the contents of state election commissioner Ramesh Kumar letter to Union Home Secretary.
On Wednesday, Ramesh Kumar had written a letter to the Union Home Secretary requesting the Centre to provide him central police force security cover, saying he apprehends threat to his life and that of his family members.
In a five-page letter to the Union Home Secretary, the SEC alleged constant intimidation and physical threats from the ruling YSR Congress party following his decision to put off elections to rural and urban local bodies for six weeks in view of coronavirus scare.
In the run up to the elections to local bodies, Ramesh Kumar noted that there were widespread incidents of violence perpetrated by the ruling dispensation against the opposition parties, mainly the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Jana Sena workers and activists right in the presence of the police. “The State had witnessed unprecedented violence and intimidation by the ruling party with the active connivance of police personnel as alleged by all the opposition parties big and small in one voice,” he wrote
There were about 35 incidents of prevention of nominations, 23 incidents of forceful withdrawals and 55 instances of violence targeting the principal opposition parties, mainly the Telugu Desam Party and the BJP-Janasena combine. “The norms of peaceful and orderly conduct of elections were completely vitiated,” he wrote.
The violence was further heighted after Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy issued a diktat to his ministers that they will be stripped of their berths and MLAs will be denied tickets if the YSRCP were to lose the civic body elections. “This had spurred the Ministers, MLAs and party cadres into frenzy and indulge in large scale violence and intimidation indulged with impunity and widely captured both in electronic and print media leaving the citizens aghast,” the election commissioner wrote in his letter.
