The Hindu : TDP to conduct polls to one lakh party panels from tomorrow

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 03, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

TDP to conduct polls to one lakh party panels from tomorrow

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD Feb. 2. The large organisational machinery of the TDP will start rolling from February 4 for conducting elections to an estimated 1 lakh party committees at booth, village and municipal ward level.

The leadership has drafted the services of 5,510 party activists, including 600 reserves, to serve as `election officials' for electing functionaries for 60,000 polling booth, 21,960 village committees and thousands of ward committees.

A meeting of the TDP politburo was convened by the party chief, N. Chandrababu Naidu, today to apprise its members about the primary level polls from February 4 to 10, a multi-layered exercise that will culminate with the election of the president at the three-day Mahanadu at Tirupati from May 27 to 29. The meeting gave the green signal to the Chittoor district unit to go ahead with arrangements for Mahanadu.

Briefing presspersons, Ummareddy Venkateswarlu, convenor of the TDP's State Election Committee, said party meetings would be held in all the districts tomorrow to fine-tune the arrangements and distribute election material sent by the party headquarters. The meetings would be attended, among others, by Ministers and local MLAs.

He said all the units had been clearly told to ensure 50 per cent representation in all committees to SCs, STs, BCs, minorities and women and that one out of every four members was a woman. The politburo, he said, did not discuss the disciplinary committee's report into the acts of indiscipline by party leaders in Kurnool, Anakapalle and Uravakonda. Mr. Naidu asked all three members of the committee to meet him tomorrow.

It was decided to convene a meeting of the Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party (TDPP) here on February 16 to discuss the party's political strategy for the budget session of Parliament. All Ministers had been invited to attend the meeting and brief MPs about projects pending with the Centre for clearance.

Mr. Venkateswarlu said the politburo endorsed the Government's decision to increase APSRTC bus fares but cautioned the management against allowing any rise in establishment costs. It called upon the Government to enhance the compensation of Rs. 50 crores it gave to APSRTC last year to Rs. 100 crores this year to offset losses on account of free bus passes to different sections.

Reviewing the drinking water crisis in Visakhapatnam, the meeting urged the Government to initiate short-term and long-term measures to improve supply to this fast-growing city. It wanted a plan of action for developing permanent drinking water sources to be drawn up and grounded within two months.

The politburo supported the growing public demand for renaming Nellore district after the Telugu martyr, Potti Sriramulu, and wanted a decision taken without delay. Mr. Venkateswarlu pointed out that the Centre had not yet cleared the State Government's proposal to rename Vizianagaram as Gajapathi district on the ground that 29 Ministries had to issue separate notifications.

A resolution was adopted expressing grief over the tragedy to the US space shuttle, Columbia, killing all seven astronauts on board, including Indian-born Kalpana Chawla. The TDP described her as a brave person who had attained great heights.

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TDP to conduct polls to one lakh party panels from tomorrow