Why Is AP SEC Nimmagadda Ramesh Rushing Into Local Body Elections: Vijayasai Reddy

Terming the conduct of State Election Commissioner (SEC) Nimmagadda Ramesh as biased, Rajya Sabha MP V Vijayasai Reddy said that the SEC is playing to the tunes of Chandrababu Naidu and thus rushing for local body elections, despite the prevalence of COVID pandemic.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Vijayasai Reddy criticised the State Election Commissioner for not following the constitutional guidelines and was having private meetings with TDP leaders. While the State was receiving less than 10 COVID cases a day, SEC postponed the elections without even discussing with the State government, but when hundreds of cases are being registered and the fear of a second wave is looming large, SEC is trying to conduct elections. He said that Nimmagadda Ramesh might join TDP after his retirement, as the TDP members are having a blind trust in him and may soon even usurp TDP leadership.

Speaking in regard to the Polavaram project, he stated that there was nothing wrong in installing the statue of Dr YS Rajashekar Reddy as Polavaram project was initiated by him. 

While former Chief Minister Dr YS Rajashekar Reddy laid the foundation for Polavaram and completed a majority of work, Chandrababu tried to stop the land acquisition. Chandrababu Naidu provoked Odisha and Chattisgarh states to stop the construction of the project and moved to Supreme Court. He stated that Naidu has no commitment towards Polavaram, and thus failed to keep his promise of completing the project by 2018. Opposition TDP role is completely absent and was working like an NRI party, residing in another State and politicising things here. He said that Chandrababu has no moral right to speak on the developments in State, as he is the only leader in the country, who stopped the novel initiative Housing for Poor.

Further, Vijayasai Reddy said that the law and order in Visakhapatnam is stable and there is nothing to fear. Speaking on Bhogapuram Airport, he said that the current airport in Visakhapatnam belongs to Navy and once the commercial operations start in Bhogapuram, all the civil aviation in Visakhapatnam airports will move to Bhogapuram.

Minister for Agriculture Kurasala Kannababu said SEC Ramesh is biased towards opposition leaders and working under the direction of Chandrababu Naidu, siding with TDP. The same Ramesh Kumar had postponed the elections in March when there were hardly three cases of Covid-19, but now trying to go for polls when over 3,000 cases are showing up per day. He dared SEC Ramesh to answer why he didn’t conduct any local body polls in the last five years, especially during the TDP regime.

The minister clarified that YSRCP is not afraid of elections and there is no reason to fear seeking public mandate when the Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy fulfilled 90 percent of the poll promises within one year of forming the government. Unlike TDP government, where the schemes were implemented just six months before the elections, our government had implemented all the welfare schemes even during the COVID pandemic.