Telugu Desam Party (TDP) national president N. Chandrababu Naidu has lauded the people for coming out and ‘revolting against the use of bogus voters and other election offences by the ruling YSRCP leaders during the civic body polls’.
Addressing the media on Monday, Mr. Naidu accused Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and his party men of committing ‘midnight murder of democracy’ by getting the TDP polling agents and leaders arrested a few hours prior to the polling.
Condemning the midnight arrest of TDP Kuppam town president Rajkumar, Mr. Naidu alleged that the police chased and lathi-charged the whistleblowers instead of encouraging them.
“Alarmingly, the police have not registered a single case even as the ruling party brought bogus voters from other districts and States for the polls to municipal bodies. It is a mockery of democracy that the police did not act against the bogus voters but resorted to lathi-charge on the people who came to stop the impersonators,” he said.
The people of Kuppam, Mr. Naidu said, put up a strong resistance by coming out in large numbers to oppose ‘the election excesses by the YSRCP leaders’.
They had caught hundreds of bogus voters and handed them over to the authorities, said the TDP president.
The former Chief Minister said that Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy was under the delusion that he could use money and muscle power to sabotage elections to subvert the public mandate. “However, today’s poll revealed how the people in the streets began revolting against the lawless government,” Mr. Naidu said.
In the Tirupati bypoll, not many people tried to oppose the ruling party’s excesses. But, the present civic body polls changed the election dynamics in the State, he said.
