Cong, CPI for seat adjustments in AP municipal polls

By R.J. Rajendra Prasad

HYDERABAD, FEB. 5. Though the Congress (I) and the CPI in Andhra Pradesh failed to arrive at an understanding for the Assembly elections last September, the two agreed to have ``local seat adjustments'' in the municipalities polls in March. The CPI (M), though out of this arrangement, will have an understanding with the CPI, to fight the Telugu Desam Party-BJP combine.

The two Communist parties had banked on their exaggerated assessment of their strength and had contested the previous Assembly polls on their own. Together they polled about two per cent of the vote, the CPI drawing a blank and the CPI(M) winning two seats in the 294-member House. This showed a decline in their performance, because in the 1983 polls these two had contested on their own and their vote share was a little more than five per cent. They have been allies of the TDP from the 1984 December Lok Sabha poll and won 34 seats together in 1994 Assembly polls. But there are still some problems in the seat adjustments between the Congress (I) and the CPI. Mr. T. Venkateswara Rao of the CPI has been the Vijayawada Corporation Mayor for the past five years, but Congress (I) leaders say they will contest for that post, without conceding it to the CPI.

The TDP-BJP talks have not got off to a start as yet. The Chief Minister, Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu, had constituted a committee with the TDP parliamentary party leader, Mr. K. Yerran Naidu, the Home Minister, Mr. T. Devender Goud, and Mr. P. Prabhakara Reddy, MP, to talk to the BJP committee, consisting of the Union Minister of State for Urban Development, Mr. Bandaru Dattatreya, the former BJP president, Mr. V. Rama Rao, and the BJP secretary, Mr. P. Venugopala Reddy.

These two parties feel that the result of coming together, which they saw last September, would be repeated in Municipal elections. However, the BJP leaders feel they got a raw deal in the Assembly polls, with eight seats in Lok Sabha but only 24 seats in the Assembly, and this time, they are asking for Municipal chairmanships in respect of a larger number of Municipalities.

Elections to the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and Rajahmundry Corporation have been stayed by Courts. In respect of Hyderabad, the stay was given on a petition by the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen, which wanted the population of minorities pertaining to 1991 census be taken into account while delineating the wards, instead of the 1981 census taken earlier. The delineation was postponed, because the State Government wanted to form a ``greater Hyderabad'', incorporating in it the nine peripheral Municipalities. But now, this proposal has been abandoned, as notification has been issued.

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