Bitter campaign marks panchayat polls

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, JULY 11. A bitter campaign of mutual recrimination and accusation has marked the elections to the Panchayat Raj institutions in Andhra Pradesh. The first phase of polling takes place on Thursday from 7.00 am to 5.00 pm while the second phase will be on Sunday. Chairpersons of 22 Zilla Parishads and about 1,100 Mandals will be chosen in the elections, conducted on a party basis.

For the ruling Telugu Desam Party, the Chief Minister, Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu, has mounted a strong attack on the Congress (I) for promoting separatist tendencies and talking about free power supply to farmers in an effort at preventing him from concentrating on development of the State. Mr. Chandrababu Naidu says that the Congress is without leadership, and party leaders are talking in different voices as they like in different regions of the State.

The Leader of the Congress Legislature Party, Dr. Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, has sought to make farmers issue and free supply of power the central theme of his election campaign. He says that the State is already giving a subsidy of Rs.1,600 crores to the Transmission Corporation to keep cost of domestic power under check, and since the revenue from the agricultural sector is only Rs. 350 crores, there is no harm in giving a larger subsidy to absorb this commitment.

The president of the Telangana Rastra Samithi, Mr. K. Chandrasekhara Rao, is campaigning on a single point agenda of achieving a separate State. He says a vote for Congress ``is a waste,'' and asserts that the World Bank and IMF-inspired reforms are `against the interests of Telangana.' The People's War Group has put up posters in several districts of Telangana calling for a poll boycott, but they normally do not enforce the boycott call through violence. The posters have appeared in Kammarpalli, Sirikonda and Bheemgal mandals of Nizamabad district besides other places.

The Congress Legislature Party has asked the State Election Commission to prevent the Chief Minister from ``making false promises to circumvent the law governing the electoral process.'' In a representation, Dr. G. Chinna Reddy, secretary, said that Mr. Chandrababu Naidu is ``a person who does not believe in democratic process and his only aim is to win a maximum number of seats through malpractices.''

The State Election Commissioner, Mr. K.Madhava Rao, is going to Kurnool tomorrow to review the arrangements for the poll on Sunday in view of the complaints that the ruling Party used muscle and money power to have a number of ZPTC and MPTC seats won unanimously. The CPI wanted an enquiry into the way the unanimity was achieved.

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Section  : Southern States
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